Refining the Italian clausal spine in light of Central Adverbial Clauses

Article Sidebar

PDF

Main Article Content

Sofia Ferroni
University of Padova
https://orcid.org/0009-0008-4736-5126
Emanuela Sanfelici
University of Padua
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2592-4528

While adjuncts like adverbs (AdvPs) and prepositional phrases (PPs) have been shown to be hierarchically merged in a fixed, universal order along the clausal spine (Cinque 1999, 2006), the external syntax of adverbial clauses (Adv-CPs) remains rather underexplored. This paper addresses this gap by focusing on a specific subset of Italian Adv-CPs, Central Adverbial Clauses (CACs), i.e., adjunct clauses that structure the event with which they are related (Haegeman 2003). We aim for a twofold goal: (a) to establish which is the first-merge position of CACs and whether they are hierarchically ordered similarly to AdvPs/PPs and, consequently, (b) to provide a comprehensive architecture of adjuncts and, more broadly, to refine that of the (Italian) clausal spine. We argue that CACs are merged at the vP/VP level, below the functional projections hosting postverbal subjects, and then we propose a derivational approach in which their surface order is determined by hierarchical merge and VP-movement plus, eventually, pied-piping (Cinque 2005). Thus, our work ultimately offers new empirical support for Cinque’s (2023) theory of linearization in the verbal extended projection.

Keywords
central adverbial clauses, adjuncts, Italian, external syntax, hierarchical merge

Article Details

How to Cite
Ferroni, Sofia; Sanfelici, Emanuela. “Refining the Italian clausal spine in light of Central Adverbial Clauses”. Isogloss. Open Journal of Romance Linguistics, 2025, vol.VOL 11, no. 7, pp. 1-38, doi:10.5565/rev/isogloss.574.
Rights
Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

(c) Sofia Ferroni, Emanuela Sanfelici, 2025

References

Badan, Linda, & Liliane Haegeman. 2022. The syntax of peripheral adverbial clauses. Journal of Linguistics 58(4): 697-738. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0022226721000463

Belletti, Adriana. 1990. Generalized Verb Movement. Turin: Rosenberg & Sellier.

Belletti, Adriana. 2004. Aspects of the Low IP area. In L. Rizzi (ed.), The Structure of CP and IP: The Cartography of Syntactic Structures Volume 2, 14-65. Oxford, NY: Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780195159486.003.0002

Belletti, Adriana. 2018. Revisiting the cartography of (Italian) postverbal subjects from different angles with reference to canonicality considerations. Italian journal of linguistics 30(2): 37-58. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003049975

Belletti, Adriana, & Ur Shlonsky. 1995. The order of verbal complements: A comparative study. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 13: 489-526. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00992739

Benincà, Paola, & Cecilia Poletto. 2004. Topic, Focus, and V2: Defining the CP Sublayers. In L. Rizzi (ed.), The Structure of CP and IP: The Cartography of Syntactic Structures, Vol. 2, 52-75. Oxford: Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780195159486.003.0003

Bianchi, Valentina. 1993. An Empirical Contribution to the Study of Idiomatic Expressions. Pisa: Scuola Normale Superiore.

Bianchi, Valentina. 1997. On the structural position of time clauses. Quaderni del Laboratorio di Linguistica 11. Pisa: Scuola Normale Superiore.

Brody, Michael. 1995. Lexico-Logical Form. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.

Büring, Daniel. 2005. Binding Theory. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511802669

Cecchetto, Carlo, & Orin Percus. 2006. When we do that and when we don’t: A contrastive analysis of VP ellipsis and VP anaphora. In M. Frascarelli (ed.), Phases of Interpretation, 71-106. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton.

https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110197723.2.71

Chomsky, Noam. 1980. Rules and representations. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.

Chomsky, Noam. 1981. Lectures on Government and Binding. The Pisa Lectures [Studies in Generative Grammar 9]. Dordrecht: Foris.

https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110884166

Chomsky, Noam. 1986. Barriers. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.

Cinque, Guglielmo. 1990. Types of A’ Dependencies. Cambridge: Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press.

Cinque, Guglielmo. 1999. Adverbs and functional heads. A cross-linguistic perspective. Oxford, NY: Oxford University Press.

https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780195115260.001.0001

Cinque, Guglielmo. 2005. Deriving Greenberg’s Universal 20 and Its Exceptions. Linguistic Inquiry 36(3): 315-332. https://doi.org/10.1162/0024389054396917

Cinque, Guglielmo. 2006. Restructuring and Functional Heads: The Cartography of Syntactic Structures, Volume 4. Oxford, NY: Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780195179545.001.0001

Cinque, Guglielmo. 2013. Typological studies: Word order and relative clauses. London: George Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315776699

Cinque, Guglielmo. 2017. On the status of functional categories (heads and phrases). Language and Linguistics 18 (4): 521-576. https://doi.org/10.1075/lali.18.4.01cin

Cinque, Guglielmo. 2023. On Linearization: Toward a Restrictive Theory. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/14681.001.0001

Cristofaro, Sonia. 2005. Subordination. [Oxford Studies in Typology and Linguistic Theory]. Oxford, NY: Oxford University Press.

https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199282005.001.0001

Davidson, Donald. 1967. The Logical Form of Action Sentences. In N. Rescher (ed.), The Logic of Decision and Action, 105-148. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press.

Demir, Duygu Özge. 2014. Adverbial clauses in modern Turkish. Conference on Central Asian Languages and Linguistics: 73-81.

Diessel, Holger. 2001. The ordering distribution of main and adverbial clauses: A typological study. Language 77(3): 433-455. https://doi.org/10.1353/lan.2001.0152

Donati, Caterina, & Alessandra Tomaselli. 1995. Language Types in Generative Grammar. Proceedings of the Tilburg Conference on Rightward Movement.

Enç, Mürvet. 1989. Pronouns, licensing, and binding. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 7(1): 51-92. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00141347

Endo, Yoshio. 2010. A syntactic view of head movement: A cartographic approach to adverbial clauses. Generative Initiatives in Syntactic Theory: 1-14.

Endo, Yoshio, & Liliane Haegeman. 2019. Adverbial clauses and adverbial Concord. Glossa: a journal of general linguistics 4(1): 48, 1-32. https://doi.org/10.5334/gjgl.589

Engdahl, Elisabet. 1983. Parasitic gaps. Linguistics and Philosophy 6: 5-34. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00868088

Frey, Werner. 2011. Peripheral adverbial clauses, their licensing and the prefield in German. In E. Breindl, G. Ferraresi, & A. Volodina (eds), Satzverknüpfungen. Zur Interaktion von Form, Bedeutung und Diskursfunktion, 41-77. Berlin: Mouton De Gruyter. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110252378.41

Frey, Werner. 2012. On two types of adverbial clauses allowing root-phenomena. In L. Aelbrecht, L. Haegeman, & R. Nye (eds), Main clause phenomena: New horizons, 405-430. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. https://doi.org/10.1075/la.190.18fre

Frey, Werner. 2016. About some correlations between formal and interpretative properties of causal clauses. In I. Reich, & A. Speyer (eds), Co- and Subordination in German and Other Languages [Linguistische Berichte Sonderheft 21], 153-179. Hamburg: Buske.

Frey, Werner. 2023. Chapter 3. Types of German causal clauses and their syntactic-semantic layers. In Ł. Jędrzejowski, & C. Fleczoreck (eds), Micro- and Macro-variation of Causal Clauses: Synchronic and Diachronic Insights, 51-100. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. https://doi.org/10.1075/slcs.231.03fre

Greenberg, Joseph. 1963. Some Universals of Language, with Particular Reference to the Order of Meaningful Elements. In J. Greenberg (ed.), Universals of Language, 73-113. Cambridge: Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press.

Haegeman, Liliane. 1991. Introduction to Government and Binding Theory. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.

Haegeman, Liliane. 2003. The syntax of adverbial clauses and its consequences for topicalisation. In M. Coene, G. De Cuyper, & Y. D’Hulst (eds), Antwerp Papers in Linguistics. 107. Current Studies in Comparative Romance Linguistics, 61-90. Antwerpen: Antwerpen University.

Haegeman, Liliane. 2006. Conditionals, factives and the left periphery. Lingua 116(10): 1651-1669. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lingua.2005.03.014

Hengeveld, Kees. 1988. Adverbial clauses in the languages of Europe. In J. van der Auwera (ed.), Adverbial Constructions in the Languages of Europe, 335-420. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110802610.335

Hetterle, Katja. 2015. Adverbial Clauses in Cross-Linguistic Perspective. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110409857

Jackendoff, Ray. 1990. On Larson’s treatment of the double object construction. Linguistic Inquiry 21: 427-456.

Kayne, Richard. 1975. French Syntax: The Transformational Cycle. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.

Kayne, Richard. 1991. Romance Clitics, Verb Movement and PRO. Linguistic Inquiry 22: 647-686

Kayne, Richard. 1994. The antisymmetry of syntax. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.

Kobayashi, Ryoichiro. 2016. Against V-to-T-to-C movement in Japanese and Korean non-constituent coordination. Proceedings of the Linguistic Society of America 1: 8-1. https://doi.org/10.3765/plsa.v1i0.3704

Larson, Richard K. 1990. Double Objects Revisited: Reply to Jackendoff. Linguistic Inquiry 21: 589-632.

Li, Charles N., & Sandra A. Thompson. 1981. Mandarin Chinese: A Functional Reference Grammar. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Lobo, Maria. 2002. On the structural position of non-peripheral adjunct clauses. Journal of Portuguese Linguistics 1(1): 83-118. https://doi.org/10.5334/jpl.49

Manzini, Maria Rita. 1995. Adjuncts and the theory of phrase structure. Proceedings of the Tilburg Conference on Rightward Movement.

Marušič, Franc Lanko, & Rok Žaucer. 2017. Coordinate structure constraint: A-/A’-movement vs. clitic movement. Linguistica Brunensia 65(2): 69-85.

Miyagawa, Shigeru. 2001. EPP, scrambling, and wh-in-situ. In M. Kenstowicz (ed.), Ken Hale: A Life in Language, 293-338. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/4056.003.0012

Miyamoto, Yoichi, & Yasuko Takata. 1996. The Status Change of Japanese Temporal Adverbial Clauses in SLA. Papers from the 20th Annual Penn Linguistics Colloquium, 69-81.

Munaro, Nicola. 2016. Localizing conditional clauses in the left periphery: evidence from multiple complementizer constructions in romance. Linguistica 56(1): 211-224. https://doi.org/10.4312/linguistica.56.1.211-224

Munaro, Nicola. 2025. Non-integrated conditionals as speech-event modifiers: evidence from Romance. Probus 37(1): 27-51. https://doi.org/10.1515/probus-2024-0001

Naderi, Mahboobeh, Dabirmoghaddam Mohammad, & Mostafa Assi. 2019. The Order of central adverbial Clauses in Persian complex clauses. Language and Linguistics 15(30): 19-50.

Nilsen, Øystein. 2000. The syntax of circumstantial adverbials. [Tromsø Studies in Linguistics 21.] Oslo: Novus Press.

Pesetsky, David. 1995. Zero Syntax. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.

Pollock, Jean-Yves. 1989. Verb Movement, Universal Grammar and the Structure of IP. Linguistic Inquiry 20: 365-424.

Rizzi, Luigi. 1990. Relativized minimality. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.

Rizzi, Luigi, & Guglielmo Cinque. 2016. Functional Categories and Syntactic Theory. Annual Review of Linguistics 2(1): 139-163. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-linguistics-011415-040827

Russ, Natalie. 2022. Positions of temporal adverbial clauses in colloquial Russian: a corpus study. 2022. Ph.D. thesis, Universität Potsdam.

Schönenberger, Manuela, & Liliane Haegeman. 2023. Chapter 5. English rationale since and a reassessment of the typology of adverbial clauses. In Ł. Jędrzejowski, & C. Fleczoreck (eds), Micro- and Macro-variation of Causal Clauses: Synchronic and Diachronic Insights, 129-166. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. https://doi.org/10.1075/slcs.231.05hae

Schweikert, Walter. 2005. The order of prepositional phrases in the order of the clause. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. https://doi.org/10.1075/la.83

Takamine, Kaori. 2010. The postpositional hierarchy and its mapping to clause structure in Japanese. Ph.D. thesis, University of Tromsø.

Tamura, Jun. 2017. Another Look at Verb Movement in Japanese. Linguistica Atlantica 36(1): 1-11.

Taraldsen, Knut T. 1981. The theoretical implications of a class of marked extractions. In A. Belletti, L. Brandi, & L. Rizzi (eds) Theory of markedness in generative grammar, 475-516. Pisa: Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa.

Tenny, Carol. 2000. Core events and adverbial modification. In C. Tenny, & J. Pustejovsky (eds), Events as grammatical objects, 285-334. Stanford, CA: Center for the Study of Language and Information.

Valmala, Vidal. 2009. On the Position of Central Adverbial Clauses. Anuario Del Seminario De Filología Vasca “Julio De Urquijo” 43(1/2): 951-969.

Verstraete, Jean-Christophe. 2002. Interpersonal Grammar and Clause Combining in English. Ph.D. thesis, University of Leuven.

von Wietersheim, Sophie. 2016. Variable binding as evidence for clausal attachment. In I. Reich, & A. Speyer (eds), Co- and Subordination in German and Other Languages [Linguistische Berichte Sonderheft 21], 319-345. Hamburg: Buske.

von Wietersheim, Sophie. 2022. The Syntactic Integration of Adverbial Clauses. Experimental Evidence from Anaphoric Relations [Studien zur deutschen Grammatik 101]. Tübingen: Stauffenburg.

von Wietersheim, Sophie, & Sam Featherston. 2019. Does structural binding correlate with degrees of functional dependence? In K. Beijering, G. Kaltenböck, & M. S. Sansiñena (eds), Insubordination: Theoretical and Empirical Issues, 265-290. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110638288-009

Williams, Edwin. 1994. Thematic Structure in Syntax. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.