Some considerations on the structure of VP in Italian : Manner adverbs, movement patterns and the interpretation of indefinites

Pili, Diana (2013) Some considerations on the structure of VP in Italian : Manner adverbs, movement patterns and the interpretation of indefinites. Linguistik Online, 6 (2). ISSN 1615-3014

Abstract

The paper gives an analysis of the syntactic structure of the verbal phrase in Italian. First, the generation of manner adverbs inside the VP will be shown (for a similar position, see Haider 1998 on German). It will be suggested that manner adverbs assume a specifier position in the VP-intern head. Further it will be shown that the Italian VP contains at least one scrambling position for the direct and one for the indirect object, which will be projected between the VP-intern subject and the manner adverb. This shows, among other things, that the traditional assumption must be revised that in Italian, all functional projections are positioned outside the VP. It will finally be shown that object moving into one of the two newly introduced positions must be interpreted specifically, as is to be expected of objects in a derived position.