On the Relative Position of 'beaucoup', 'guère', 'peu', 'rien', and 'trop' in French

Since Pollock (1989), word order variation concerning adverbs has been dealt with by assuming that verbs move around adverbs, which always remain in situ. Instead, quantifiers are taken to move leftward in the sentence, either in visible syntax or in Logical Form. This paper is concerned with Cinque (1999)’s proposal that there is, instead, a single universal hierarchy of adverbs. Our purpose is to examine five French quantifiers, not considered in Cinque (1999) and to try to determine their position in the hierarchy proposed there. In fact, four of these quantifiers can also be used as adverbs. The testing method is a comparison between "minimal pairs" of sentences. Quite clear-cut data show that all five quantifiers follow the adverb "presque" (almost) and precede "bien" (well). While "rien" (nothing) and "tout" (everything/all) occupy two different positions, "beaucoup" (a lot) and "peu" (a little) seem to occupy the same position. We suggest some labels for the corresponding aspectual heads.