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In:Adverbs and Particles at the Form-Meaning Interface
Edited by Marco Coniglio, Kalle Müller and Markus Steinbach
[Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today 292] 2026
► pp. 142–175

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Diagnosing features in syntactic derivation

The role of adverbs

 | University of Campinas
 | University of Campinas
 | University of Campinas
Published online: 23 March 2026
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https://doi.org/10.1075/la.292.07tes
Abstract
The criterion often used to define and identify “linguistic categories” (also known as Jackendoff’s criterion) — whereby membership in a given category can be defined by means of the ban on the joint occurrence of elements from one and the same class in the same sentence — has been extensively explored in Theoretical Syntax and Typology. If it is true that members of the same class/category cannot co-occur, and if Movement is an instance of the same Merge operation, then the assumption of the “decompositionality principle” would allow one to extend Jackendoff’s criterion to identify the features involved in syntactic derivation as the structure is built up. We provide three sets of examples in which adverbs can be used to diagnose the features involved in three particular structures in Brazilian Portuguese.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.The category criterion across distinct domains
    • 2.1The extended projection of the verb: Adverbs and the category criterion
    • 2.2The extended projection of the verb: Functional Heads and the category criterion
    • 2.3The extended projection of the Noun and the category criterion
  • 3.Expanding the criterion: Adverbs as diagnostic tools to identify features in syntactic derivation
    • 3.1On the role of adverbs in diagnosing some of the features involved
      in the ‘discourse marker’ use of capaz in Brazilian Portuguese
    • 3.2On the role of adverbs in diagnosing some of the features involved
      in the detelicisation of telic events
    • 3.3On the role of adverbs in diagnosing some of the features involved in wh-exclamatives in Brazilian Portuguese
  • 4.In guise of conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
References (107)
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