The syntax of inflection
(53) a I quickly assessed the students – I assessed quickly the students
b I did not fail his paper – I failed not his paper
We already have an account for the behaviour of the main verb in the presence of the
negative. The negative is a head that blocks the movement of the verb over it. If
negation is situated below the I position, then the verb will not be able to move to
support the inflection and hence do-support is necessary, as demonstrated in (53b).
This will not affect the process of auxiliary insertion however, as this does not involve
movement. Yet, an inserted auxiliary bears both tense and agreement and so it seems
to be inserted into tense and moved to I, suggesting that the position of the negation is
lower than the tensed element, contradicting (49b) where negation is above the non-
finite tense. It seems then that negation must be below a finite tense, but above the
verb.
The only real problem we face is accounting for the grammaticality of (53a), where
the adverb appears in front of the tensed verb. It is this observation which has lead
people to the assumption that the inflection must lower to the verb or that the analysis
must be more abstract to account for what looks like a downward movement in terms
of an upward one.
However, these approaches are based on the assumption that the position of the
adverb is rigidly fixed and so if the verb follows the adverb it must be inside the vP.
But we have seen that adverbial placement is not so rigid, although it is subject to
some restrictions. It would seem to me to be more straightforward to assume that in the
case of a finite main verb, the verb does occupy the inflection position and what needs
accounting for is the position of the adverb.
Suppose that, like the negative element, the adverb likes to follow the finite tense
and precede the verb. However, unlike the negative it is not rigid about this.
Specifically, when the verb and the inflection are in one place, it is impossible for the
adverb to be between them. Thus a choice must be made: put the adverb above the
tense, or put it below the verb. It seems that the restriction on adverbs preceding verbs
is the stronger, so the adverb will be adjoined higher than the I position. The position it
is actually adjoined to is the I', which we will see is a position where the sentential
adverb may appear:
(54) IP
DP I'
they AP I'
fervently I vP
believed 1 - ∆ v'
v VP
t 1 everything I said t 1