How to Syntax 2 (Adverbs with Attributive Adjectives)

This is the second of a series of blog posts showing how I think about a syntax problem when I first notice it. For the first installment, see:

How to Syntax I (the now that-Construction)

I will occasionally choose phenomena that I notice, and talk about them in an informal fashion, breaking down the process of preliminary syntactic exploration. That is, I am just thinking off the top of my head (brainstorming), with few or no revisions. Ideally, I will give myself a time period of three hours maximum to prevent polishing. The focus of the discussion will be on process. I am not trying to come up with a polished analysis. 

Of course, if people suggest references for me to look at, I will look at them later, but that would be a second stage of thought, not the preliminary exploration.

Data Capture

How does a syntactician find data?

In this particular case, I caught myself writing the following sentence in a recent book review that I posted on my blog:

(1) A significant part of the book concerns sometimes deeply personal events in Stohl’s life outside of the office,

I wrote the sentence in writer mode, not in linguist mode. But once I had written the sentence, and I was looking it over, sometime strange caught my eye: the use of the adverb sometimes modifying the adjective phrase deeply personal. The sentence is completely natural to me, and it raises the following issues: (a) How is the temporal adverb interpreted? (b) What is the temporal adverb modifying? (c) How is (1) related to other uses of temporal adverbs such as (2):

(2) The events described were sometimes deeply personal.

In (2), deeply personal is being used a predicate adjective phrase, not an attributive adjective phrase.

Basic Combinatorics

Before answering these questions and trying to understand the theoretical implications of a sentence like (1), it is first necessary to try to get some kind of basic understanding of the combinatorial possibilities of the construction. I call this Basic Combinatorics. For example, in (1) the adjective phrase is complex involving personal being modified by deeply. It is also possible to find examples with a simple adjective:

(3) Her sometimes/often/frequently impenetrable comments really bother me.

The examples also correspond to sentential uses of the same adverbs:

(4) The comments were sometimes/often/frequently impenetrable.

The example in (3) also differs from the example in (1) in that (3) has a possessor her, and (1) did not have a possessor.

Another example, due to Richard Kayne, is:

(5) that frequently obnoxious friend of theirs

Once again, this corresponds to the sentence:

(6) Their friend was frequently obnoxious.

In all these cases the adverb must precede the adjective:

(7) a. * Her impenetrable sometimes comments really bother me.

b. *that obnoxious frequently friend of theirs.

But no such constraint holds for clauses:

(8) a. Her comments were impenetrable sometimes.

b. ?That friend of theirs was obnoxious frequently.

So far, we have examples with the adverbs sometimes, often and frequently? These adverbs are all of a particular class of temporal adverbs specifying the frequency of an event (quantifying over times). 

So, the next question is: Are any other kinds of adverbs possible? 

Since this is a question about adverbs, it helps to have a resources like Cinque 1999 available (Adverbs and Functional Heads, Oxford University Press). It is especially useful to have a searchable version of this book. That will help search for different kinds of adverbs to test.

What about the evaluative adverb unfortunately?

(9) He regretted his unfortunately inappropriate remarks.

This sentence seems acceptable, and has the following clausal counter-part:

(10) His remarks were unfortunately inappropriate.

What about the epistemic adverb probably?

(11) a. ?I did not happen to hear the probably excellent lecture.

b. ?He regretted his probably inappropriate remarks.

These examples do not seem as quite as natural to me as the other adverb classes. Since they are not completely unacceptable, I suspect that better examples of the same adverb could be found. At this point, an internet search may be useful. The sentential counter-parts to these are fine:

(12) a. His lecture was probably excellent.

b. His remarks were probably inappropriate.

Consider now evidential adverbs:

(13) I was surprised by his obviously/clearly/apparently inappropriate comments.

Compare to the clausal counter-parts:

(14) His comments were obviously/clearly/apparently inappropriate.

Temporal adverbs like yesterday are completely unacceptable:

(15) a. *I did not happen to hear the yesterday excellent lecture.

b. *He regretted his yesterday inappropriate remarks.

Even though the sentential counter-parts to these examples are OK:

(16) a. His lecture was excellent yesterday.

b. His remarks were inappropriate yesterday.

One difference between yesterday and the other adverbs is position. Yesterday cannot be used clause internally (only clause initially and clause finally):

(17) a. *His lecture was yesterday excellent.

b. *His remarks were yesterday inappropriate.

So, a potential generalization might be:

(18) Only clause-internal adverbs can occur with attributive adjectives.

Note (18) does not say that all clause-internal adverbs can occur with attributive adjectives. Rather, if an adverb occurs with an attributive adjective, then it will appear clause-internally. I have no idea if (18) is an accurate generalization. But by formulating the generalization, you open up the possibility of testing it with further examples down the line.

Generalization (18) seems to be related to the generalization illustrated in (7). Only clause-internal adverbs can occur with adjectives, and when they do, they must precede the adjective.

But a clear generalization is the following:

(19) Not all sentential adverbs can occur with attributive adjectives.

I have just briefly gone through a few cases. An outstanding research question is what classes of adverbs can occur with attributive adjectives.

Can two adverbs be used at the same time? How about:

(20) a. His unfortunately sometimes inappropriate remarks caught me off guard.

b. His unfortunately frequently obnoxious friend was also invited.

These seem a bit awkward, but basically OK. So the generalization is:

(21) An attributive adjective may occur with multiple adverbs.

Paraphrase and Entailment

Let’s consider the interpretation of the relevant examples. We will probe this question using paraphrase and entailment. Consider first:

(22) Her sometimes/often/frequently impenetrable comments really bother me.

This sentence seems to be equivalent to the following with an appositive relative clause:

(23) Her comments, which are sometimes/often/frequently impenetrable, really bother me.

Similarly, consider again:

(24) that frequently obnoxious friend of theirs

This sentence seems to be equivalent to the appositive relative:

(25) that friend of theirs who is frequently obnoxious

In neither case is a restrictive relative clause interpretation possible. For example, the following continuation seems difficult:

(26) ?Her frequently impenetrable comments bother me, but the other ones do not.

Similarly, the following seems difficult:

(27) ?My sometimes unpleasant cat likes my often amusing cat.

These remarks lead to the following open question:

(28) When a sentential adverb is used with an attributive adjective, is the interpretation always appositive (non-restrictive)?

Theoretical Significance

What is the possible theoretical significance of these empirical observations? In this section, I am not proposing to give a polished analysis, just a few pointers to what path one could take in developing the topic.

The adverbs that we have been looking at are usually taken to modify clausal projections such as TP or AspP (or the clausal projections in Cinque 1999). But in the relevant example, they appear together with attributive adjectives in a DP, not a clause:

(29) his sometimes inappropriate comments

It seems unlikely that sometimes is modifying inappropriate directly here:

(30) his [AdjP sometimes inappropriate] comments

Rather, sometimes is a quantifier quantifying over times, and should undergo QR to adjoin to a sentential constituent (as other quantifier phrases do). 

To complicate the picture a bit, the following does not seem unacceptable to me:

(31) Often inappropriate though his comments are….

Even though often inappropriate is moving as a constituent, the question is still how often can modify inappropriate directly. My suspicion is that a clausal constituent larger than an AdjP is moving in (31).

Putting aside (31) for the movement, I suggest that in the example in (29), the string sometimes inappropriate is a really a reduced appositive relative:

(32) His comments which are sometimes inappropriate really bother me.

The reason why various sentential adverbs can be used with attributive adjectives is that attributive adjectives can be reduced appositive relatives with a hidden clausal structure. I put the conclusion in the strongest possible way as follows:

(33) All attributive adjectives (both restrictive and non-restrictive) are reduced relatives.

This is a well-known analysis of attributive adjectives in generative grammar, mostly recently promoted by Kayne 1994.

Conclusion

I have discussed some methods of preliminary syntactic exploration in this blog post. A summary of the methods is given here:

(34)

a. Data Capture

b. Basic Combinatorics

c. Formulating Generalizations

d.     Formulating Open Questions

e. Paraphrase and Entailment

This is only the very first step in cataloguing the methods syntacticians use in preliminary exploration. I hope to be able to post many similar blogs filling out this list in the future.

Addendum (Wednesday January 3 2024)

After posting to my blog, I received two personal communications. Since the blog post is not meant to be a published or polished paper, I do not make any corrections. But I add the posts here, since they are very relevant:

Cinque 2010: 57 notes: "If modification by (speech act, epistemic, etc.) clausal adverbs is diagnostic of the presence of a clausal constituent, one should expect only indirect modification adjectives, which enter a reduced relative clause, to allow them." 

In that source, he gives the following examples:

a. These are frankly unacceptable conditions

b. This is a probably favourable situation

c. This is a certainly important contribution

He also notes (personal communication) that "These sentential adverbs are only compatible with predicative adjectives (those derivable from relative clauses), but not with direct modification adjectives."

The source is: 
Cinque, Guglielmo. 2010. The Syntax of Adjectives. MIT Press, Cambridge.

Richard Kayne (personal communication) gives me the following examples of restrictive relatives with sentential adverbs:

a.  The only frequently obnoxious friend of theirs that I've met personally is John Smith.

b.  Any even sometimes unpleasant cat is in danger of being given away.