Sentence-medial adverb placement in Spanish: acceptability and preference

This paper examines the acceptability of Spanish adverbs in sentence-medial positions in declarative main clauses. Both simple and complex verb forms are considered. Prior work has established that some Spanish adverbs can be placed in more than one sentence-medial position. To date, research on this topic by means of formal judgments is notably sparse, so this paper aims to expand the body of available evidence. In addition to examining acceptability, this paper also investigates whether there is a preferred position when more than one is available. Two online experimental tasks were completed by native speakers of Spanish (n = 48): an acceptability judgment task and a gap filling task. The tasks contained target sentences with one of the four adverbs that were selected for the study: completamente ‘completely’, normalmente ‘usually’, siempre ‘always’ and ya ‘already’. Half of the target sentences contained just a lexical verb, while the other half also included an auxiliary. The acceptability data are first analysed descriptively, followed by an analysis with cumulative link mixed models. These analyses are then contrasted with a descriptive analysis of the preference data supported by binomial testing. The results show that the adverbs tested in the study display different patterns of acceptability and preferential placement. The results of each adverb are discussed individually within the current theoretical framework, addressing implications for theories that view adverbs as specifiers and those that view them as adjuncts.