A derivational constraint on adverbial placement in Mandarin Chinese
汉语北方方言副词位置的派生限制
James H-Y. Tai 戴浩一

Abstract 摘要
A general derivational constraint on the placement of predicates is proposed to account for the surface distribution of Chinese adverbials, negatives, and auxiliaries which can be appropriately derived from underlying predicates. It is observed that in Chinese, a preverbal adverbial is always understood as having the main verb in its scope, while a postverbal adverbial is never understood in this way. It will be shown that the proposed constraint and an independently motivated assumption of universal characterization of the semantic scope relation can excellently explain the facts of linear order of multiple adverbials and their corresponding semantic scope interpretations in Chinese. By assuming that the proposed constraint holds for Chinese, but not for English, it is possible to account for the differences between Chinese and English with respect to the placement of adverbials and other surface constituents which can be derived from underlying predicates.