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Article published In: Language and Linguistics
Vol. 26:4 (2025) ► pp.632–672

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The syntactic categories of adverbials and the structural integration of complement clauses in Siwkolan Amis

 | Fu Jen Catholic University
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Available under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) 4.0 license.

For any use beyond this license, please contact the publisher at rights@benjamins.nl.

Published online: 23 May 2025
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https://doi.org/10.1075/lali.00240.jhe
Abstract
This work attempts to examine the morphosyntactic properties of adverbial expressions that are realized as verbs in Siwkolan Amis, and to investigate how they are structurally represented to form adverbial verb constructions (AVCs). I shall first provide evidence to show that these adverbial expressions behave similarly to typical verbs, including: (i) occupying sentence-initial position; (ii) inflecting for voice and TAM morphology; and (iii) attracting genitive pronouns and aspectual clitics. Moreover, Amis adverbial verbs select non-finite clauses as their complements, based on raising of the subject, clitic climbing, the av-only restriction, the wide scope of negation, and the atemporality condition, which arise from the transparent clausal boundary between the matrix clause and the complement clause. I follow Wurmbrand, Susi & Shimamura, Koji. 2017. The features of the voice domain: Actives, passives, and restructuring. In D’Alessandro, Roberta & Franco, Irene & Gallego, Ángel J. (eds.), The verbal domain, 179–204. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar voice restructuring system in arguing that Amis adverbial verbs are restructuring verbs that select a voice restructuring configuration consisting of Mod-AspP and deficient VoiceP, such that the clausal boundary is rendered transparent, and it is accessible to cross-boundary operations. This voice restructuring view provides implications for the typology of complement clauses in AVCs. Specifically, there is a higher degree of structural integration between the matrix and the complement clause in Amis AVCs, making the complement clause restructured as part of the matrix clause to form a mono-clausal structure of the AVCs.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Empirical base
  • 3.Toward a theoretical account
    • 3.1Against the adjunction analysis of Amis AVCs
    • 3.2Against the control analysis of Amis AVCs
    • 3.3Against the complex predicate analysis of Amis AVCs
    • 3.4Amis adverbial verb constructions as restructuring constructions
    • 3.5Reduced non-finite clauses and the av-only restriction
    • 3.6Derivation of Amis adverbial verb constructions
  • 4.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • List of abbreviations
  • References
References (57)
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