J. van de Weijer

A note on the scope of adverbs in Malagasy

Inspired by Kayne’s (1994) Antisymmetry hypothesis and Linear Correspondence Axiom (LCA), there have been over the last decade numerous analyses employing extensive Remnant Movement1 (RM). While many of these are controversial, the RM analysis of Malagasy found in Pearson (2001) and Rackowski & Travis (2000) (R&T) in particular solves several outstanding puzzles of Malagasy syntax, although it does run into a possible problem with regard to the proper placement of arguments and adverbials, discussed in Thiersch (2004). Nevertheless, this approach to Malagasy seems promising, and confronted with apparent counterexamples to the analysis, one would like to see if they bear up under scrutiny. A welcome result would be that under a proper analysis, the approach actually predicts the judgments in question. This paper proceeds as follows. We give a brief summary of Malagasy syntax and the Remnant Movement approach, and give by way of motivation three sample problems which this analysis explains. We then discuss an alleged counterexample, which turns out to be a problem for languages other than Malagasy as well, and show that under the correct analysis it is in fact consistent with R&T’s analysis.