Adverb extraction, specificity, and structural parallelism

Abstract

This paper investigates adverb extraction out of traditional adjective phrases (TAPs) like “extremely expensive”, in a number of Slavic, Romance, and Germanic languages, and establishes two novel generalizations regarding such extraction out of predicative and attributive TAPs, also showing what the (un)availability of such extraction reveals about the structure of TAPs cross-linguistically and in different constructions in a single language. I argue that attributive TAPs are never bare APs in languages that use only one adjectival form attributively. Languages that use two adjectival forms in the attributive position allow adverb extraction out of predicative and attributive TAPs, which indicates that adverb extraction is possible only if a bare AP is used in this position. More generally, I argue that extended projections of different lexical categories tend to be uniform within a language with respect to how much structure they project. Cet article etudie l’extraction adverbiale tiree des syntagmes adjectivaux traditionnels (SAT) tels que « extremement cher » dans un certain nombre de langues slaves, romanes et germaniques. Nous proposons deux nouvelles generalisations au sujet de l’extraction adjectivale tiree des SAT predicatifs et attributifs, et discutons des consequences de la possibilite ou non possibilite d’extraction dans differentes langues ainsi que dans differentes constructions. L’hypothese proposee est que les SAT ne sont jamais des SAdv nus dans les langues qui n’utilisent qu’une seule forme adjectivale attributivement. Les langues qui utilisent deux formes adjectivales dans la position attributive permettent l’extraction adjectivale tiree des SAT predicatifs et attributifs, ce qui indique que l’extraction adverbiale est possible seulement si un SAdv nu est utilise dans cette position. Plus generalement, il est propose que les projections etendues de plusieurs categories lexicales ont tendance a etre uniformes dans une langue donnee par rapport a la quantite de structure projetee.