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On The Notion of Subject for Subject-Oriented Adverbs

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2026

Mikinari Matsuoka
Mikinari Matsuoka*
Affiliation:
University of Yamanashi
*
Faculty of Education and Human Sciences University of Yamanashi 4-4-37 Takeda, Kofu, Yamanashi 400-8510 Japan [mikinari@yamanashi.ac.jp]
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Extract

This article investigates the nature of predication of so-called subject-oriented adverbs in English. It is noted that there are both conceptual and empirical issues to be addressed. On the conceptual side, there is no consensus in previous studies on what exactly the notion of subject is for these adverbs and why these adverbs have an orientation to the subject. On the empirical side, there are circumstances in which some of the adverbs seem to be construed with the object argument of the verb. This article focuses on these problems through an examination of the adverbs occurring in locative, passive, unaccusative, and resultative constructions. It is argued that when these adverbs seem to be associated with the object, they are predicated of a phonetically empty pronoun that occurs as the subject of a small clause, controlled by the object. Moreover, it is indicated that subject-oriented adverbs occurring in different positions across different constructions are all parasitically predicated of DPs that are introduced by a functional head in primary predication. Given the proposal made in recent studies that predication relationships between lexical categories and their external arguments in general are mediated by a functional head, it is claimed that subject-oriented adverbs also need to be supported by such a head to be associated with DPs. Thus, it is concluded that the notion of subject for these adverbs and their orientation are derived from the general theory of predication.

Keywords

adverblocativepredicationresultativesmall clausesubject

Information

Type
Research Article
Information
Language , Volume 89 , Issue 3 , September 2013, pp. 586 - 618
Copyright
Copyright © 2013 Linguistic Society of America

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Footnotes

*

I would like to thank the editor Greg Carlson, associate editor Jason Merchant, and anonymous referees for Language, who gave many insightful comments and suggestions on the previous drafts of this article, which contributed significantly to improving it. I am also grateful to Yuji Takano, Koichi Takezawa, and Lisa Travis for very helpful discussions and advice at various stages of conducting this research. I also benefited from remarks made by Mark Baker on some of the core data presented here. My thanks also go to faculty members and students at McGill University and the University of Yamanashi, particularly Gerry Allen, Jonathan Brown, Richard Caraker, Steve Henneberry, Paul Klousia, Russell Mayne, Jill Strothman, Shane Sutton, and Mark Vallely, for kindly acting as consultants for some of the English data provided here. Portions of this work were presented at the 2007 annual conference of the Canadian Linguistic Association at the University of Saskatchewan in May 2007, at the 31st annual meeting of the Tsukuba English Linguistic Society at the University of Tsukuba in October 2010, and at the 36th annual meeting of the Kansai Linguistic Society at Osaka Prefecture University in June 2011. I am indebted to Elizabeth Cowper, Yukio Hirose, Seizi Iwata, Nobuhiro Kaga, Hideki Kishimoto, Yukio Oba, and others in the audience for valuable comments and questions. This research has been supported by JSPS KAKENHI grants number 20520351 and 23520459. All remaining errors and inadequacies are my own.

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