The Syntax and Semantics of Locating Adverbials Michel Aurnague*, Myriam Bras**, Laure Vieu**, Nicholas Asher*** Résumé Cette étude porte sur les adverbiaux de localisation du français tels que trois jours plus tard ou devant la maison dont le rôle est de situer temporel- lement et/ou spatialement le procès évoqué par la phrase dans laquelle ils apparaissent. La description et la formalisation proposées tentent de combiner plusieurs plans d'analyse. Les interactions complexes entre la position des adverbiaux (dans la phrase) et leur contribution sémantique sont tout d'abord envisagées, de même que la structure syntaxique ('interne') de ces éléments. En se focalisant sur la position d'adjoint du syntagme verbal, on montre en- suite que le contenu sémantique des adverbiaux considérés est mieux saisi par une approche 'relationnelle' que par une approche 'référentielle', plusieurs caractéristiques supplémentaires de ces marqueurs étant recensées. Une sé- mantique compositionnelle des adverbiaux temporels et spatiaux en position de VP-adjoints est finalement proposée afin de rendre compte des phénomè- nes mis au jour. Abstract This study deals with French locating adverbials like trois jours plus tard (three days later) or devant la maison (in front of the house) that situate temporally and/or spatially the process described by the sentence in which they appear. The description and formalization proposed try to combine sev- eral levels of analysis. The complex interactions between the position of the adverbials (in the sentence) and their semantic contribution are first exam- ined, as well as the syntactic ('internal') structure of these elements. Next, and focusing on the position of verb phrase adjunct, we show that the semantic content of the considered markers is better grasped by a 'relational' approach than by a 'referential' approach, several other characteristics of these markers being also outlined. Finally, a compositional semantics is proposed for tem- poral and spatial adverbials in VP-adjunct position, in order to account for the highlighted phenomena. * ERSS, Université Toulouse-Le Mirail; **IRIT, Université Paul Sabatier; ***University of Texas at Austin. 1 1. Introduction This paper deals with the semantics of locating adverbials in French. These are adverbials operating a single temporal or spatial localization such as le 23 Mars 2002 (on March 23, 2002), trois jours plus tard (three days later), à Toulouse (at Toulouse) and devant la maison (in front of the house) in example (1): (1) Joan naquit le 23 Mars 2002 à Toulouse. Il arriva à Ayguevives trois jours plus tard. Les voisins l'attendaient devant la maison. (Joan was born on March 23, 2002 in Toulouse. He went to Ayguevives three days later. The neighbors were waiting for him in front of the house.) They are used to locate the main eventuality of the sentence in which they appear in space and/or in time. Quite complex adverbials can be formed from prepositions and noun phrases, and even from other complex adverbials, in a recursive manner, as in deux jours après la réunion (d’)avant les va- cances (two days after the meeting before the holidays). They are often ana- phoric and as such contribute to the cohesion of a discourse. These constructions, however, have not received a complete analysis. On the one hand their syntax as complex adverbial phrases has not been much described in the literature. On the other hand, their semantics lacks a full-fledged compositional analysis.1 Further, the important discursive role of adverbials, observed in many descriptive accounts of discourse structure, has not been integrated with such a compositional semantic analysis. We therefore adopt a transversal approach whose aim is to provide an analysis all the way from the syntactic level to the lexical semantics level and up to the discourse level. Built on the basis of a principled syntactic analysis, the required compositional semantics for locating adverbials typically needs to involve underspecified (e.g., anaphoric) elements. Then, this semantics has to be embedded within a theory of discourse structure and interpretation in order to resolve these underspecified elements. In this paper, we tackle the first, sentential, part of this task, keeping the general, discursive, aim in mind. After having delimited our study and dis- cussed the syntactic function of these adverbials within the sentence (Section 2), we describe the internal syntactic structure we propose for the whole class of complex locating adverbials (Section 3). Then, we describe how they be- have meaning-wise (Section 4), and present our compositional semantic analysis (Section 5). We try to systematically account for the structural and semantic similarities between temporal locating adverbials and spatial ones. This is particularly relevant not only because these similarities are great, but also because these adverbials in trajectory contexts take up a spatio-temporal interpretation (Asher et al. 1995b), as those of (2): 1 Some proposals, as that of (Pratt & Francez 2001) do exist, though. 2 (2) On ne voyait rien du paysage. Il pleuvait à verse depuis Toulouse. À Cordes, la pluie se transforma en grêle, et, dix minutes plus tard / dix kilomètres plus loin, le tonnerre se mit à gronder. (We couldn't see any- thing of the landscape. It had been pouring from rain from Toulouse. At Cordes, the rain became hail, and ten minutes later / ten kilometers fur- ther, there were rumbles of thunder.) The discursive role of these adverbials will be fully discussed in a follow-up article. 2. Adverbials Considered in this Study and their Syntactic Role We have already quoted some adverbials we want to deal with: le 23 Mars 2002, à Toulouse, trois jours plus tard, devant la maison, depuis Tou- louse, dix kilomètres plus loin. We could add to this list: à huit heures (at 8), le premier jour des vacances (on the first day of holidays), depuis une heure (for one hour / since 1 o'clock), jusqu’à midi (until noon), au bout de trois kilomètres (after three km). From a syntactic point of view, these adverbials are all Preposition Phrases, as we will see in the next section. From a seman- tic point of view, they all include nouns whose lexical semantics bears a temporal or spatial feature such as heure, jour, midi, lundi for the temporal ones, and such as kilomètre, maison, Toulouse for the spatial ones. Be they spatial or temporal, they can be classified in two groups: those expressing a duration or a spatial span such as deux heures, un mois, deux kilomètres (two hours, one month, two kilometers), and those expressing a temporal or spatial location such as ce matin-là, la semaine suivante, Noël, le jardin, Toulouse (that morning, the following week, Christmas, the garden, Toulouse). We exclude from our study adverbials like tous les matins (every morning) that introduce multiple localization through a quantification; in- deed, temporal quantification adverbials have already been well-studied. Adverbials based on an NP denoting a temporal or spatial extension are lo- cating adverbials if they involve an anaphoric element anchoring them, like depuis deux jours or dix kilomètres plus loin; we do not consider here those adverbials that only express a duration or spatial extension and do not actu- ally locate the eventuality in space or time, such as pendant trois jours (dur- ing three days), sur trois kilomètres (over three kilometers) or en deux heures (in two hours). We won’t say anything about adverbial constructions such as quand Luc était à Toulouse (when Luc was in Toulouse), depuis que Paul était entré dans la ville (since Paul had entered the town), jusqu’à ce qu’il fût passé devant la maison (until he passed (in front of) the house) because they introduce subordinate clauses and, as a consequence, call for other kinds of analyses and tools. Last, we will not consider adverbs whose semantics pri- marily plays a part at the discourse structure level rather than at the spatio- temporal structure level, as we showed it for puis (then) in (Bras et al. 2001). Other adverbs such as alors (then) or ensuite (next) are also discourse con- nectives, and as such are not considered here. 3 A number of studies have regarded the syntactic and semantic roles of French temporal and spatial adverbials, or their English or German equiva- lents. Some of them consider adverbials in general, and are not specific to temporal and spatial locating adverbials (Quirk & Greenbaum 1973, Leech & Svartvik 1975, Bellert 1977, Mélis 1983, Gross 1990, Nølke 1990, Parsons 1990, McKercher 1996, Molinier & Lévrier 2000); most studies concerned with temporal adverbials are actually dealing with temporal clauses or with quantificational adverbials (de Swart 1991, Johnston 1994, Le Draoulec 1997, Pratt & Francez 2001); only a few address temporal or spatial locating adverbials specifically (Maienborn 1995, Pratt & Francez 2001). Some of these studies distinguish various syntactic functions, and ac- cordingly different positions on the trees; others take for granted a single possible position, usually VP-adjunct. In a similar way as Maienborn (1995) does, we will consider the two IP-adjunct (sentential modifier) and VP- adjunct (VP modifier) positions and distinguish them from the V'-adjunct (verb modifier), and V-complement (verb argument) positions. In VP-adjunct position, a temporal or spatial locating PP modifies the verb phrase, which, semantically speaking, means that it specifies the loca- tion of the eventuality described by the VP. For instance, we take the two PPs in (3) to be VP-adjuncts: (3) Marie dansa sur la terrasse jusqu'à l'aube. (Marie danced on the terrace till dawn.) This VP-adjunct position is to be distinguished from the argument po- sition, i.e., mandatory (although not necessarily realized) complements of the verb, as in (4) and (5), as well as from the V'-adjunct position, or facultative complements, as sur la terrasse in (6). Real complements and V'-adjuncts do not locate the eventuality as a whole but rather interact with the verb to make its semantics more precise (Boons 1987, Asher & Sablayrolles 1995, Maien- born 1995), and as a result will not be considered any further here. (4) Marie sortit (de la maison) (Marie came out (of the house)) (5) La fête dura du matin jusqu'au soir (The party lasted from the morning to the evening) (6) Marie sortit de la maison sur la terrasse (Marie came out of the house onto the terrace) In IP-adjunct position, a temporal or spatial locating PP modifies the whole sentence, which, semantically speaking, means that it modifies the truth-conditions of the whole proposition, i.e., it says when or where the sentence is true. This is what happens in Maienborn's (1995) example (7) which can be paraphrased with a when-clause: when she was in Bolivia, Maria had red hair. So-called frame-adverbials are also IP-adjuncts: they introduce a temporal or spatial referent that serves as an index at which a number of propositions are evaluated, as in (8) and (9). (7) In Bolivia, Maria had red hair. 4 (8) Le lundi, Luc arriva et Paul partit. (On the Monday, Luc arrived and Paul left. ) (9) A Toulouse, il faisait soleil et le vent était doux. (At Toulouse, the sun was shining and the wind was warm.) As suggested by examples (7-9), an initial position with a separating comma is typical of IP-adjuncts. Symmetrically, an ending position without a separating comma, as in (1-3), is typical of VP-adjuncts. Indeed, some ad- verbs which are only sentence modifiers like heureusement (fortunately) cannot occur in ending position without a comma: (10) Heureusement, Luc arriva. (Fortunately, Luc arrived.) (11) *Luc arriva heureusement. It may seem that since locating adverbials can appear both in IP- and VP-adjunct position, this distinction is not really relevant to us. This is not so. In some cases, the two positions yield very different readings. In (12), the adverbial à huit heures introduces a time referent at which it is said to be true that Marie has eaten earlier, whereas in (13), the adverbial situates the eating event itself at eight o'clock while the pluperfect tense situates this event be- fore some other salient temporal referent. (12) A huit heures, Marie avait mangé. (At eight, Marie had eaten.) (13) Marie avait mangé à huit heures. (Marie had eaten at eight.) A large number of tests have been devised to distinguish the IP- and VP-adjunct positions for adverbials in general, both for French (Molinier & Lévrier 2000) and for English (McKercher 1996). According to these tests —and as seen with (12-13) for instance—, temporal and spatial adverbials have an ambivalent status: they cannot be categorized as either IP-adjuncts or VP-adjuncts once and for all, contrarily to an adverbial like heureusement, for instance. Molinier and Lévrier (2000) show that while temporal adverbi- als are closely related to the verb (possibility of a cleft construction: c’est à huit heures que Marie mangea (it is at 8 that Marie ate)), their scope can nevertheless include the whole sentence (possibility to appear in an initial detached position in a negative sentence: (14)). Similarly, McKercher (1996) underlines that spatial adverbials often behave as ‘sentence adjuncts’, al- though they clearly fulfill the properties of ‘predicate modifiers’. These ob- servations are not really contradictory; they just point out that it is necessary to identify the right syntactic position on each occasion of use. In order to determine the position and function of a given locating ad- verbial (and since the initial/final position criterion is a good but not decisive enough indication) we will use a test that assumes that IP-adjuncts cannot fall under the scope of the negation, while VP-adjuncts can: (14) A huit heures, Marie ne mangea pas (mais à dix heures *ø/si). (At eight, Marie did not eat (but at ten ø/she did).) (15) Marie ne mangea pas à huit heures (mais à dix heures). (Marie did not eat at eight (but at ten)) 5 In (14), the negation bears only on the event, which means that the sentence asserts that Marie did not eat. In contrast, in (15) the reading in which the negation bears on the adverbial is available, and the sentence could even presuppose that Marie did eat (as with the paraphrase: ce n'est pas à huit heures que Marie mangea (it is not at eight that Marie ate)), as the possible continuation shows it. In the remainder of this paper, we will focus our analysis on the VP- adjunct use, that we take, as most scholars, to be the primary one. It may be possible to explain the change of contribution of the adverbial between its VP-adjunct use and its IP-adjunct one by some kind of type-lifting corre- sponding to the syntactic movement, although we will not explore this further here. We will leave the IP-adjunct case for a future paper in which we will tackle, more generally, the discourse effects of locating adverbials. The IP- adjunct position gives rise to several contextual effects, like the spatio- temporal interpretation of à Cordes, 10 km plus loin and 10 mn plus tard in (2) or the frame role of le lundi and à Toulouse in (8-9), that can both be fully analyzed in a discursive context only. 3. Internal Syntactic Structure of Locating Adverbials Although the position and function of locating adverbials has been dis- cussed in the literature, their internal syntactic structure has not been system- atically described and analyzed. Here, we take our locating adverbials, be they in VP-adjunct or IP-adjunct position, to have the general syntactic structure shown on Figure 1. PP DP P' trois jours P DP avant D NP l' N examen Figure 1: trois jours avant l’examen 6 Two preliminary remarks have to be made concerning this basic struc- ture. First, the head of the prepositional phrase can be a lexically empty ele- ment as in ø hier (yesterday), ø la veille (the day before) or ø le lundi (on the Monday). This entails that, although not lexicalized, we consider that an element playing the syntactic and semantic part of a preposition is present in those expressions (such an assumption is corroborated by comparisons with other languages). Second, we have seen that the NPs in the proposed structure express either an extension (a duration or a spatial span), or a (temporal or spatial) location. The determinant phrases they make up will be called respectively ext-DPs and loc-DPs. Both possibilities occur for the DP-complement posi- tion while the DP-specifier position is restricted to ext-DPs. PP DP P' D NP P DP deux après N jours D NP la N' N' PP N P DP reunion (d')avant D NP les N vacances Figure 2: deux jours après la réunion (d’)avant les vacances Actually, the SPEC and COMP elements are not confined to the DP category (in a restrictive sense). Besides the noun phrases usually occurring in SPEC, (e.g., trois kilomètres in trois kilomètres avant la station d’essence (three kilometers before the gas station)), adverbs may fulfill a similar role in 7 the structure (e.g., bien in bien avant la station d’essence (well before the gas station) or juste in juste après les vacances (just after the holidays)). The role of the ext-DP in trois jours avant l’examen (three days before the examina- tion) is indeed similar to the role of the adverb in bien / peu avant l’examen (well / shortly before the examination). However —and for the sake of sim- plicity— we will focus this study on syntactic structures in which the SPEC and the COMP positions are represented by means of a DP (with a possibly empty D head). The complete structure of an adverbial can be more complex than the basic representation in Figure 1 because the NP complement of the DP- COMP can itself incorporate a locating PP (or other kind of adjunct) as in (deux jours / peu de temps) après la réunion (d’)avant les vacances ((two days / shortly) after the meeting before the holidays), whose structure is shown on Figure 2, or in (100 mètres / un peu) après la station (d’)avant le village ((100 meters / a bit) after the gas station before the village). Beyond the uniform character that the general syntactic structure we propose suggests, two categories of adverbials can be distinguished which basically match the opposition between prepositions and adverbs. We have, on the one hand, real prepositions like depuis (since), avant (before), derrière (behind), etc. that usually combine with a lexicalized DP-COMP (depuis la réunion (since the meeting), derrière la mairie (behind the town hall)) but which also give rise to anaphoric or deictic uses when the DP is empty.2 There is, on the other hand, a class of markers —usually called ad- verbs— that normally do not appear with a lexicalized DP-COMP (plus tard (later), plus loin (further), dedans (inside)) even though the presence of a contextually determined DP-COMP can be postulated. Indeed, several clues reveal the presence of a non lexicalized element, among which the existence of similar structures selecting a complement (e.g., pas plus tard qu’hier (only yesterday)) or their re-analysis/re-use as prepositions that is sometimes made in colloquial language (e.g., dedans la mairie (inside the town hall)). The characterization of adverbs and, in particular, the properties that distinguish them from prepositions constitute open questions that we will nevertheless not tackle here.3 We would only like to stress that, beyond the fact that they require a lexicalized DP-COMP or not, real prepositions as well as adverbs can be analyzed by means of the syntactic structure previously introduced. These remarks on adverbials calling for prepositions or adverbs also show that, when an element (here the DP-COMP) of the syntactic structure is not lexicalized, the interpretation of the whole expression has to rely on other referential information. Indeed, an important property of locating adverbials is their dependence on or their independence from the preceding discourse (anaphora) or the context of utterance (deixis). The adverbials involved in 2 But some prepositions (jusqu’à, dans, à, il y a, de) require a lexicalized DP-COMP. 3 For detailed analyses of French adverbs see (Gross 1990, Molinier & Lévrier 2000). 8 narratives typically are dependent on the linguistic context, i.e., they are anaphoric —e.g., deux heures plus tard (two hours later), trois kilomètres plus loin (three kilometers further)— or deictic, although the latter case will be set aside in this study.4 Of course, in addition to anaphoric ones, we will analyze locating adverbials which are context independent —e.g., le 23 mars 2002 (on March 23rd 2002), à Toulouse (at/in Toulouse). Further remarks have to be made concerning the syntactic structure of two kinds of complex adverbials. Adverbials like au coin de la rue (at the corner of the street), au milieu de la réunion (in the middle of the meeting) involve two locating nouns. According to descriptive studies on internal localization (Borillo 1992, Aurnague 1996), they are rather made up of a complex preposition (such as au coin de or au milieu de) combined with a simple DP-COMP (la rue, la réunion) than of the simple preposition à asso- ciated with a complex DP (le coin de la rue, le milieu de la réunion). For adverbials of the form jusqu’à / après Noël (till Christmas / till after Christmas), jusque sur le toit (up onto the roof) —and even though this kind of construction will not be studied as much as the simpler ones—, it will be assumed that a few prepositions (e.g., jusque, depuis) can take other PPs as complements (e.g., à Noël, après Noël, sur le toit).5 The final structure of such expressions can be even more complex as the complement can some- times take a specifier, as in jusque bien après Noël (till long after Christmas). So, the syntax of these complex adverbials can be accounted for by adding a structure involving embedded PPs to the basic one seen above. 4. Semantic Description of Locating Adverbials 4.1. Relational semantics The semantic analysis of temporal and spatial locating adverbials can give rise to two distinct approaches (at least). In the first approach that we call ‘referential’, the preposition —applied to its complement—, introduces a time or a place at which the eventuality described by the VP is located (in (16), for instance, the event of Marie joining Luc would be located in a time defined by the adverbial après la réunion). In the second approach —called ‘relational’—, the prepositional phrase does not introduce any new referent on top of that of its complement but rather indicates that the eventuality and the complement of the adverbial have to stand in the relation denoted by the 4 For more on French spatial deictic expressions, see (Kleiber 1992, Borillo 1993). 5 Another point of view consists in stating that, even if a combination of embedded PPs is diachronically or synchronically possible for such expressions, the final syn- tactic structure could be also grasped by a complex preposition (e.g., jusqu’à, jusqu’après, jusque bien après, jusque sur) simply associated with a DP-COMP, even though this lessens the compositional character of the analysis. 9 preposition (that is, the preposition après in (16) would only compel the joining event to be later than the meeting). (16) Marie rejoignit Luc après la réunion. (Marie joined Luc after the meeting.) As it could be foreseen in the previous remarks, the referential approach —which is also the most widespread—, implies that all the locating adverbi- als call for a unique locating relation, inclusion: the preposition operates as a function on the complement and provides the time or place in which the eventuality will be located via the inclusion. This choice presents the incon- venient to treat the prepositions in a non-homogeneous way. When a prepo- sition —in all or part of its uses— already denotes some notion of inclusion in the entity designated by the complement (e.g., à (at), dans (in)), the sys- tematic use of the relation of inclusion in the resulting semantics leads to consider that this preposition has a null contribution or to assume that all other prepositions are virtually preceded by such an ‘inclusion’ marker. The drawbacks of the referential approach are even more evident in the spatial or spatio-temporal domain than in the pure temporal one which is unidimen- sional and calls for a limited number of (temporal) relations. Indeed, the analysis of spatial markers showed that the semantics of prepositions like sur (on) or dans (in) cannot be reduced to a ‘geometrical’ inclusion in a space portion (defined by applying the preposition to the complement (landmark entity)) because it involves ‘functional’ relations (e.g., support, containment) based on a real interaction between the located entity and the landmark (‘subject’ and complement of the preposition, respectively) (Vandeloise 1986, Aurnague et al. 1997). Prepositions like avant (before)/après (after) related to the domain of orientation and motion provide similar arguments against a ‘referential’ approach. In (17), the simple application of the prepo- sition to the complement/landmark does not suffice to determine a location; we need to take into account the direction of motion of the located eventual- ity as well as other elements of the context (e.g., the course of a possible itinerary). This behavior of spatial markers would therefore be better ac- counted for by stating that the eventuality and the landmark stand in a rela- tion fulfilling the different constraints we mentioned (based on the interaction of these entities as well as other possible factors from the context). (17) Luc s’arrêta 10 mètres avant le grand chêne (Luc stopped 10 me- ters before the big oak) Besides the difficulties related to the exclusive role assigned to the complement of the preposition, the referential approach seems to give rise to ontological problems. For instance, in a description like (18) involving sev- eral plural entities moving around, are we going to introduce a unique com- plex place (something like a ring?, how large?) or several places situated a few hundred of meters from the presidential house? Have these locations to be stable or moving (following the moving groups of workers)? and, in the 10