Moving verbal chunks in the low functional field

The paper proposes a partial unification of two computational devices: the derivational option advocated in Cinque (2004) to account for the distributional difference between certain adverbs and the corresponding adverbial PPs; and “smuggling”, the device proposed by Collins (2005, 2006), which circumvents minimality violations in passive and raising constructions. After reviewing certain cases of smuggling moving verbal chunks in passive, we propose to also extend this derivational technique to the analysis of psych-verbs. Introduction Cinque (2004) treats distributional differences between certain adverbs (fully natural in clause-internal position) and the corresponding adverbial PP’s (only natural in clause-final position) by assuming leftward movement of a verbal constituent past the adverbial PP: (1)a Gianni ha rapidamente risolto il problema ‘Gianni has rapidly solved the problem’ b Gianni ha risolto il problema con rapidità ‘Gianni has solved the problem with rapidity’ If the aspectual adverbials rapidamente/con rapidità appear in the specifier of a “celerative aspectual head” (Aspcel), the order in (1)b is derivable by moving the verbal chunk risolto il problema to the left of Aspcel P, as illustrated in (2): (2) Gianni ha [ con rapidità Aspcel [ risolto il problema ] ] Gianni ha [ risolto il problema] [ con rapidità Aspcel ] Cinque (1999) also proposes a similar analysis to deal with certain unexpected cases of violations of the adverbial hierarchy in the linear order. A similar analysis has been proposed for the distribution of the aspectual marker done in Jamaican creole (Durlemann (2006)). The completive aspect marker done may precede or follow the VP, a state of affairs that Durrleman analyzes as involving optional movement of the VP to the Spec of the aspectual head: (3) a Im done nyam i’ ‘S/he finished eating it’ 1 An anonymous reviewer points out that Italian Sign Language also has an aspectual marker corresponding to done in clause final position, a property presumably amenable to the same analysis presented in the text. See also Koopman and Szabolcsi (2000) for an extensive use of movement of verbal chunks to accommodate variations in word order. Clearly the movements of verbal chunks discussed in this paper involve the lower part of the clausal functional field, hence the v/Voice/Aspect complex and not the Tense/Mood complex. We will not elaborate here on the exact nature of the heads attracting the various verbal chunks in the different cases.