The dual analysis of manner adverbs in Japanese

his paper examines the distribution and interpretation of manner adverbs in Japanese. We explore the division of labor between the syntactic, semantic and discourse constraints involving the adverbial modification. After having observed manner adverbs potentially produce the ambiguity between the complement and the adjunct interpretation, we offer an explicit account for the apparently elusive paradigm, ascribing such properties to the dual analysis of complements and adjuncts for the correct characterization of manner adverbs in the language. We then show that the proposed analysis can be easily integrated into a Lexical–Functional Grammar (LFG) formalism.

Research highlights► Japanese manner adverbs behave either as complements or as adjuncts. ► Adjuncts cannot be transferred, whereas complements can. ► The dual approach overcomes the problem of scope readings for adverbs.