Speaker: Malte Koot (LUCL)
Title: The internal and external syntax of genoeg (‘enough’)
Date: Thu 29 February
Location: Lipsius 1.28
Time: 16.15 – 17.30
It has been known since Barbiers (2001) that genoeg (‘enough’) can turn predicate adverbials into sentence adverbials. When genoeg occurs in a sentence adverb, it is syntactically obligatory, but makes little to no semantic contribution:
(1) Enough support
Annie heeft gek *(genoeg) niet gedanst.
(2) Regular enough
Annie heeft niet gek (genoeg) gedanst.
In this talk, I analyse the external and internal syntax of such enough support adverbs. Using Cinque’s (1999) adverbial hierarchy, I make the novel observation that enough support splits further into subject-oriented and evaluative adverbs. These cases show different syntactic behaviour, both externally and internally.
Next, I nuance the widely accepted theory that genoeg in adverbial clauses is an affix: only enough support is a full-fledged affix; regular enough is merely an affixoid.
Finally, I analyse the internal syntax of help-genoeg. I suggest that there exists a general principle for the formation of sentence adverbials, the Sentence Predicate Projection. The word genoeg functions as a Sentence Predicate head, which establishes the connection between the underlying adjective and the clause.