Before or After the Direct Object: German Adjectival Adverbs and the Syntax-Semantics Interface

Abstract

This paper investigates the influence of the syntactic position of adverbials on sentence interpretation in German. It concentrates on sentences containing adjectival adverbs which are either positioned before or after the direct object. I argue that these adverbs, dependent on their position relative to the direct object, receive either a manner or an event-related interpretation. To derive the different readings, I make use of an underspecified SF. After a discussion of other accounts for the data, I will very briefly compare my results to those for local adverbials.