Adverb placement, convergence of structure and licensing

This contribution addresses the following issues: i) the structural identif ication of adverb positions (adjoined, embedded or in Spec-positions); ii) interface conditions for adverbs (syntax-semantic interface); iii) serializ ation patterns of adverbs (post- vs. pre-head order). First, it is argued that important empirical generalizations are missed if adverbials are assigned to spec-positions of functional heads. This paper d efends the claim that non-selected adverbials are either adjoined or embedd ed, depending on the relation to the head of the containing phrase. Second, the relative order of adverbials is characterized as an interface effect o f the mapping of syntactic domains on type domains in the structure of the semantic representation. Third, the differences in the pre- and post-head s erialization patterns of adverbials that apparently support an adjunction a nalysis are reconciled with an embedding analysis.