An adjunction analysis of quantifiers and adverbials in the Hungarian sentence

The paper argues against the uniform analysis of the left-peripheral elements of sentence structure as specifiers of designated functional projections, participating in feature checking. It shows on the basis of Hungarian evidence that quantifiers and adverbials – though sharing with specifiers the property of c-commanding their scope at the syntax–LF interface – also have properties which distinguish them from operators substituted into specifier positions, e.g., the lack of V-movement, multiple potential merging sites, and the lack of a fixed direction. So as to account for these properties, and to eliminate problems raised by feature-checking theories, e.g., Brody and Szabolcsi (2003), adverbial placement and Q-raising are analyzed as adjunction, which is defined as a spatial operation linearizable either as left-adjunction or as right-adjunction.