Auxiliary to T movement: evidence from adverbs

Throughout generative syntax, verb movement has been discussed and debated to varying degrees. Syntacticians have attempted to describe this unique form of head movement and its constraints cross-linguistically. Pollock’s (1985, 1997) elaborate comparison of French and English verb movement restrictions has been considered one of the major contributions to the discussion. His analysis has led to the general understanding that auxiliaries are the only variety of verbs in English capable of moving to a higher position in the TP-layer—i.e. the T. In order to prove this claim, Pollock and others (e.g. Roberts 1993, Ernst 2002, Engels 2012, etc.) have examined the placement of other constituents—i.e. adverbs, negation, etc.

In terms of adverb placement, Cinque (1999) assigns a position for each adverb in a rigid hierarchy. Claiming the adverbs are in the specifier position, this syntactic representation follows the rich Cartographic framework. I agree that adverbs are base-generated in the specifiers; however, I argue that such a specific ordering of adverbs is rather difficult to justify. Therefore, I adopt the scope-based approach, which groups adverbs into “zones” throughout the TP-layer.

By analyzing spoken corpus data, this thesis provides empirical evidence of auxiliary verb movement occurring in Modern English. I argue that, despite being considered optional, English speakers move auxiliaries to the T more frequently, which is consistently indicated by the analysis of adverb placement in the TP-layer.