The Adverb Hierarchy in Jordanian Arabic: A Cinquean Approach

Abstract

This study explores the adverb/adverbial hierarchy in Jordanian Arabic (JA), appealing to Cinque’s (1999) Universal Adverb Hierarchy (UAH), a cross-linguistically attested model of the structural placement of adverbs/adverbials. The study examines the extent to which JA relevant data is amenable to the UAH. The main findings generally corroborate the presence of the UAH in JA, supplying empirical evidence in favor of the validity of the UAH. More specifically, the study shows that some adverbs/adverbials (belonging to a specific semantic category) should occur to the left of (and hence c-commanding (cf. Kayne 1994)) other adverbs/adverbials that belong to a different semantic category, exactly in the same fashion that the UAH expects. Another important finding of this study is that the categorical status of an adverb vs. an adverbial is immaterial to the UAH, implying for an underlying structure of the UAH which is not affected by the type of the category (i.e. an adverb vs. an adverbial) that fills the designated Specifier positions of the UAH.