Deconstructing the “adverb plus complementizer construction” in Romanian

Abstract

In this paper I examine the “adverb plus complementizer” construction (Ramat and Ricca 1998: 212) in Romanian, seeking to establish its characteristics in more detail than usually achieved in the literature on adverbs. I show that, at least in Romanian, this construction displays regularities that can shed light on our understanding of the basic mechanism of sentence-building and how adverbs are integrated in a sentence. I also argue that a correct description of this construction requires the integration of two opposing theories on adverbs that have come to be represented by Cinque (1999) and Ernst (2002).

Keywords

• the adverb plus complementizer construction
• sentence adverb
• root complementizer
• adverb movement
• left periphery