A Revisit to the Complementation Analysis of Manner Adverbs in Mandarin Chinese

Based on studies of English adverbs, it has been proposed that Mandarin manner adverbs also originate in the complement position of verbs.Such a complementation approach is essentially based on an incorrect interpretation of adjective predicate constructions in disguise.The so-called sentence-final “manner adverbs” are actually predicative adjectives, which is supported by evidence from extraction phenomena, A-NOT-A questions, main clause adverbs and dislocation constructions.With the complementation analysis refuted by manner wh questions and object incorporation, it is reaffirmed that real manner adverbs are base-generated sentence-medially, between the subject and the predicate.