AP-de (地) Adverbs in Mandarin

Abstract

Mandarin manner adverbs like dasheng ‘loudly’ (lit. ‘big voice’) occur both sentence-medially and sentence-finally, whereas adverbs formed with the adverbializer de (地) like kuaikuaide ‘quickly’ occur only sentence-medially. The behavior of AP-地 adverbs is puzzling under a classical adjunction analysis and under Cinque’s (1999) hierarchy of functional projections. Here, I argue that Mandarin manner adverbs have a uniform low attachment in V complement position and that preverbal/medial position reflects obligatory movement imposed by the status of 地 as a “concordializing element”.

Keywords

• mandarin
• manner adverbs
• case
• concord