Adverb: its definition and classification

Chapter II

Part I

Having once been identified as,? perhaps the least studied and most maligned part of speech? ,the adverb has been widely investigated since, with little agreement arising (1).

Because of its great heterogeneity, the adverb class is the least satisfactory of the traditional parts of speech. Indeed, it is tempting to say simply that the adverb is an item that does not fit the definitions for other parts of speech. As a consequence, some grammarians have removed certain types of items from the class entirely and established several additional classes rather than retain these subsets within a single adverb class. The term, ?adverb? is a bit problematic. Traditional grammars use it to label any structure modifying an adjective, any structure modifying an adverb, and any structure modifying a verb. Some contemporary grammarians try to avoid this term ?adverb? by using only semantic terms like intensifier or structure terms like adjunct. But in fact the traditional labelling system arose precisely because the same words can take on all three of these modification functions. Thus, as a part of speech category the label ,adverb? applies to a exceedingly diverse set of items in English language, including modifiers of verbs, adverbs, adjectives, clauses, and sentences. The label ?adverbial? extends the range to prepositional phrases, noun phrases, and clauses, all of which may have the same modifying functions as adverbs. McCawley attributes this ?lumping together? as a prejudice that the number of ?parts of speech? should be small?,a prejudice that has little basis as the once equally common prejudice that the number of chemical elements should be small?(2).

Adverbs are more difficult to define than nouns, verbs and adjectives because there are so many subclasses and positional variations. Endings in adverbs are involved in two ways.

(1)Jakendoff, Ray S. Semantic Interpretation in Generative Grammar. The MIT Press, Cambridge, MA 1972, p. 47

(2)McCawley, James D. The Syntactic Phenomena of English. The University of Chicago Press, Chicago, IL, 1988, p.631

First, numerous adverbs are derived from the corresponding dynamic adjectives by adding the ending ?ly. This is the case with adverbs of manner(quick-quickly), which tell how something is done. This also includes sentence adverbs or disjuncts (hopeful-hopefully) which modify a whole sentence. The second type of ending is the inflection involved in connection with the comparatives and superlatives of adverbs of degree(quickly-more quickly- most quickly).In addition , a few adverbs have comparatives and superlatives with the endings ?er and ?est, however , this is not common since these endings can only be used with adverbs which do not end in ?ly. Adverbial expressions derived from adjectives in (?ly) (friendly, generally),(-like) (ladylike),(-style,-fashion) (western style) must be constructed periphrastically, e.g in a friendly way/,manner ,in general. Examples will show that there is no difference between them: they can just substitute each other:

?In general, they attended a mass of thanksgiving in the villa?s chapel?.(Bertrice Small ? Love Wild and Fair? p.591)

?Generally speaking, Howard seemed dressed as usual-the threadbare but exactly buttoned jacket, the infinitely worn, but carefully polished shoes?. (James Gould Cozzens ?By Love Possessed? p.520).

? He came to Giovanna for release only? holding her hands, and looking friendly at her pale face?. (Bertrice Small ? Love Wild and Fair? p.258).

? Beth, who was collecting the scattered Author-cards, looked up and said in a friendly way, ?I am afraid you are tired?. (Louisa May Alcott ? Little Women? p.111).

Thus, we can assume that in the above examples in general can substitute generally speaking, and friendly- in a friendly way as well.

Throughout the history of (written) English the adverbial ?ly suffix appears to have steadily gained ground. From its adoption as an adverbial suffix in Old English, this suffix has spread to a whole range of new items, syntactic environments and function, showing itself to be extremely versatile. One example is epistemicity, which has been increasingly expressed through ?ly adverbs. There is a claim(1) that there are no adverbs in this function until the middle English period and that Old English does have a few ?ly adverbs expressing high probability. However, it was not until the middle English period that the class of epistemic or modal adverbs really began to expand and it was also in this period that low probability adverbs began to occur. Swan shows that the whole category of sentence adverbs (or disjuncts) has undergone a similar development. Sentence adverbs are defined by Swan as adverbs which express the speaker?s evaluation of the content of the clause. In addition to modal adverbs, Swan?s sentence adverb class contains evaluative adverbs(fortunately, regrettably), speech act adverbs(frankly, briefly), and subject disjuncts (wisely, cleverly).All these classes accordind to Swan, have expanded and diversified enormously through the times especially in the 20^th century(1988:ch 5).Another function which has become increasingly dominated by ?ly adverbs is subject modification. According to Donner(1992:2)adding the ?ly suffix to adjectives ?evidently constituted common practice with the general run of adverbs from no late than the closing decades of the twelfth century on?.

There seems to be substantial evidence, that the ?ly suffix, has throughout the written history of English, spread to every new items and taken over new functions; in Swan?s terminology, English has been (and still is) going through an ?adverbialization process?(Swan 1988).

In English, adverbs seem to be both freely occurring and highly restricted in terms of distribution. Theories have been put forth in both the syntactic and semantic realms proposing dependency of adverb placement on specialized rules that access certain semantic factors of the adverbs themselves.(Jakendoff 1972),on feature checking with predetermined nodes of attachment (Cinque 1999,Alexiadou 1997), and on scoping relations amongst adverbs themselves and among adverbs and verbs (Ernst 1984,2002).

(1) Jacek Fisiak, Marcin Krygier. Advances in English Historical Linguistics. Berlin: Walter de Gryuter. 1998

Though fairly wide-ranging in their opinions regarding the deciding factor in adverb distribution, each theory, and in fact most all theories, rely on a given classificatory system that divides adverbs into groups based on semantic or functional properties, demarcating subject-oriented, speaker-oriented, and manner most commonly, though modal, epistemic, degree, frequency, time and many others have also been presented in literature.

Three main theories have guided the development of the literature surrounding adverbial syntax. The earliest work evolved out of transformational grammar?s exclusion of the grammatical category ?adverb? from the base, but ultimately requires too much specialized syntactic machinery to be feasible. More recent work in the Association Theory operates under the assumption that adverbial meanings correlate one-to-one with a strictly hierarchical series of syntactic nodes. The work in this theory is again too complicated to be useful. Most recently, work has been done bordering the syntax-semantics interface proposing scope-based resolutions for issues of meaning variation with position. Each theory is insufficient and a new proposal is needed.

The transformational account of adverbial syntax actually begins with adjectives, rather than adverbs. As first proposed in Chomsky?s Syntactic Structures, but adopted to a greater or lesser degree by a number of subsequent theories, strict transformationalism operates under the assumption that adverbs do not exist as a primitive in the base, but rather are surface constituents derived from deep structure adjectival paraphrases.

,,Ellen put the money in her pocket carelessly?ß ,,Ellen was careless at putting money in her pocket??.

Transformationalism proposes that a morphological transformation adds the ?ly ending to the base adjective and a second transformation operates to insert the new lexical item into the main clause while also deleting the ?at? clause and rearranging the verb. While in many cases the adjectival paraphrases yield equivalent interpretations to those of their adverbial counterparts, the necessary syntactic machinery, which is considerable, is not independently motivated and so renders the treatment inadequate.

Even if we were to accept the large amount of syntactic manipulation necessary to associate an adjectival paraphrase with an adverbial phrase, no single adjective paraphrase structure can be used as a basis for all adverbial surface structures, or even for all occurrences of a single adverb: a problem arising from the multiple functionality of many adverbs. The theory is further complicated by the fact that a significant number of adverbial constructions exist without plausible adjectival paraphrases.

Later transformational accounts(Randford 1988, Emonds 1976, among others) also propose a base free from adverbs, addressing adverbs ?positional variants? of adjectives, based on their relative distribution, allowance of the same range of modifiers, and the morphological relationship between the two(Radford 1988, 141). Radford argues that because many adverbs are formed from adjectives +ly, because both adverbs and adjectives can be modified by very/rather /quite etc. If types exist on adverbs as features and adverbs are merely positional variants of adjectives, then those same features of type that exist on adverbs must also exist on adjectives, which is clearly not the case. No adjective can be said to possess the feature ?manner?, ?modal?, or ?evaluative?.

Association theory,(which will be thoroughly investigated in the second part of this chapter) as Wyner (1988) calls it, developed both as a progression from and a reaction against strict Chomskian syntax. The most strongly criticised of the association theories is that of Cinque(1999), which argues for strict syntactization of adverbial meaning through a universal hierarchy of adverb positions. Cinque argues that the relative ordering of adverb in a clause is determined by a universal hierarchy of adverb positions. Cinque argues that the relative ordering of adverb in a clause is determined by a universal hierarchy, i.e. itself strictly determined by phrase structure, in which adverbs serve as specifiers of functional heads. Cinque?s analysis has adverbs occupying fixed positions around which the V and Aux heads move to yield the appropriate surface structure.Cinque concludes that adverb placement is fixed by the phrase structure, while the verb is allowed to move to any of the heads in whose specifier the adverb(s) reside. Manner adverbs should then, if taken as modifying the verb, appear in positions which allow them to adjoin to VP and must not appear in any position that would require they adjoin to IP(1).

(1) Wyner, A. A discourse Theory of Manner and Factive Adverbial Modification. InTWLT 13: Formal Semantics and Pragmatics of Dialogue. Eds. J. Hulstijn and A. Nijholt. TWENTE. 1998, p. 249-251.

A third group of analyses, which is referred to as ,directive theories? , argues that adverbial syntax is somehow derived from adverbial semantics and dates back to work by Jakendoff in early seventies. In his Semantic Interpretation in Generative Grammar, Jakendoff(1) considers adverb distribution to be a direct consequence of semantic selectional restrictions and interpretation rules that operate on the syntactic level but incorporate semantic information. Jakendoff assumes the existence of a category Adv in the base, but regards the specifications manner, subject-oriented, speaker-oriented, etc. as semantic markings only with no structural resonance. He proposes semantic representations for each of three classes of adverbs: speaker-oriented, subject-oriented, and manner/time/degree.

According to his rules, which rely on a split-aux structure developed by Emonds(2), adverbs occurring sentence-initially and pre-auxiliary must attach to S, while those occurring between aux and V or sentence-finally may attach to either VP or S (Jakendoff 1972, 79).

It should come as no surprise that there are several sortings of English adverbials. Quirk et.al (1985) sort adverbials into conjuncts (sentence connectives such as however, nevertheless, and first), disjuncts(e.g. probably, fortunately, frankly), subjuncts (e.g. morally, willingly, deliberately and the various focusing adverbs, intensifiers and downtoners), and adjuncts (of place, time, manner, means, instrument, purpose, cause, etc.).Each of these groups is extensively subdivided, primarily on the basis of semantic contribution.

Jakendoff(1972) (mentioned above) classifies adverbs into the verb phrase(VP) adverbs, the subject-oriented adverbs, and the speaker-oriented adverbs. Bellert (1977) points out five disjunct groups within Jakendoff?s speaker-oriented adverbs: the evaluative adverbs(e.g. fortunately, surprisingly), the modal adverbs (e.g., logically, mathematically), the conjunctive adverbs(e.g., therefore, finally), and the pragmatic adverbs(e.g., sincerely, precisely).

(1)Jackendoff R. Semantic interpretation in Generative Grammar. Cambridge, Mass, Massachusetts, Institute of Technology Press. 1972.

(2)Emonds, J. A Transformational Approach to English Syntax. New York. Academic Press.1976.

McConnell-Ginet (1982) discusses the passive sensitivity of the subject-oriented adverbs. Adverbs such as reluctantly, wisely and unwillingly ?induce non-synonymy of actives and related passives? (McConnell-Ginet, 1982:145), as demonstrated by the sentences below:

?Reluctantly, the king instructed his son?( Bertrice Small ? Love Wild and Fair? p.131).

We can change the sentence and have the following:

?Reluctantly, his son was instructed by the king?.

In the first sentence, it is the king, the sentence subject who is reluctant. In second- it can be the king or his son who is reluctant.

Ultimately, McConnell-Ginet proposes that the passive-sensitive adverbs allow VP-external(attitude) readings and VP-internal(manner) readings. The VP-external adverbs are taken to be outside the sentence. Thus, McConnell-Ginet?s VP-external adverbs align Jakendoff?s subject-oriented adverbs.

With perhaps the exception of McConnell-Ginet, each of the above classificatory systems groups adverbs based on their role in given sentence, either on what they are ,oriented? toward(Jakendoff,Ernst) or how they relate semantically or pragmatically to other arguments(Quirk et. al., McConnell-Ginet). Those relating to the speaker?s opinion or certainty regarding the proposition conveyed by the sentence would be, speaker-oriented?, those relating to the way in which the action of the sentence is performed would be manner, ,conjunct? adverbs join two things together, ,frame?(Frey and Pittner?s classification of adverbs: frame, position, event, process) adverbs set up a reference for some part of the sentence and so on. While dividing adverbs in this way and then cross-classifying them using both these ,semantic classes? and the distributional patterns is convenient, the theory is complicated by the tendency of many adverbs to fall into multiple semantic classes. ?Cleverly?, for instance? can describe either the subject overall disposition or the manner in which he performs a given action:

?Margaret cleverly kept that warning in mind and got safely down stairs sailing into the drawing rooms?. (?Louisa May Alcott ? Little Women?, p.75.).

If we change the position of cleverly we can have the following: ?Margaret kept that warning in mind cleverly and got safely down stairs sailing into the drawing rooms??. In (3a) Margaret was clever to keep that warning in mind. In (3b), the way in which Margaret kept that warning was clever.

Many adverbs behave similarly, somewhat confounding semantic classification by yielding readings that vary with position, and other adverbs include such systems altogether, or necessitate such highly specific classifications so as to make the entire practice of semantic classification utterly overwhelming.

Merelyand comletely, for instance, could be said to denote the degree to which something is something else.However, the two are not interchangeable as in the examples below:

?I am not excited; I am merely mad?, his Aunt Maud said.( James Gould Cozzens ?By Love Possessed?, p. 24).

? Oh, there I completely agree with you ,Judge!??, Mr. Wolf said (James Gould Cozzens ?By Love Possessed? p.57).

?You tended to think of Helen as completely fooled by a selfish, idle boy?. (James Gould Cozzens ?By Love Possessed?, p.36)

Although both adverbs have a notion of degree in their interpretation, they are interchangeable. Similar problems of classification arise in other cases as well. Ernst(2002) argues that such distinctions are actually semantic selectional restrictions on types of event-arguments adverbs can take. Development of different classes and sub-classes that can accommodate the subtle similarities and differences in meaning of various adverbs, whether focusing on their orientation or the types of event-arguments they take, would expand any syntactic system beyond the point of reasonable use.

On a related note, some theories, which have largely been dismissed in more recent works, have proposed the existence of multiple lexical entries for adverbs taking multiple interpretations in different positions. While this does aid in resolution of the distributional/interpretational cross-classification problem, it fails to recognize the fact that the issue is not really solely semantic at all. In the case of adverbs like cleverly, whose interpretation differs with position ,the actual meaning of the word itself does not change. Whether describing the disposition of the subject in pre-auxiliary position or the way the action was performed in sentence-final position, cleverly still means ,with intelligence? or something of that sort.

In the early seventies, Richmond Thomson(1) and Robert Stalnaker(2), ,,with a little pushing from (George) Lakoff,?identified two major logical classes of adverbs on English:1)sentence adverbs like necessarily, and 2)predicate adverbs like reluctantly and slowly?(Henry,1973:217).Thomason and Stalnaker(1973) provided four semantically based criteria for distinguishing the two kinds of modifiers. Extensive work has further illuminated the properties associated with sentence modification and the complimentary properties associated with predicate modification(Bartsch,1976, Koktova,1986).

Some useful sortings of adverbs appear in Shwan-Fan Huang?s work(1975).He (1975:9) defines an adverb semantically as ,,a sentence constituent which expresses a function of a function , where the term function is to be understood in the sense in which it is used in the predicate calculus??. Constituents satisfying it can vary greatly in their syntactic properties. The syntactic category of adverbs, according to Lyons (1966) can be defined as the part of speech satisfying the semantic definition for adverbs, but failing to exhibit the inflectional or distributional properties of nouns, verbs, and adjectives.

To clarify what is meant by the locution that adverbs modify verbs demands an inquiry into the particular ways verbs of action are grouped and distinguished from each other, and an analysis of the different aspects of actions associated with the verb. Concepts relevant to a general understanding of action sentences involve that of event, participant, and result of an event. Some adverbs express a participant?s state of mind, as in:

(1)Thomas, Richmond H. Logic and Adverbs. The Journal of Philosophy. 68(20), 715-716.

(2)Stalkner, Robert C. Semantics of Natural Language. D.Rields Publishing Company, Dordrecht, The Netherlands. 1972, p. 380-382

?They seemed to have covered their tracks carefully?( where carefully shows some state of mind to the agent ?they?) (W.Somerset Maugham ?The Colonel?s Lady?p.152).

?Mastering her emotions, he slowly and carefully told his mother what had happened?.(where slowly and carefully show some state of mind to the agent ?he?)( Bertrice Small ? Love Wild and Fair?, p. 217).

?She couldn?t help speaking anxiously: her voice was grave and low? (where anxiously ascribes some state of mind to the patient she).( James Gould Cozzens ?By Love Possesed?p.183).

?Poor Jo would gladly have gone under the table, as one thing after another was tasted and left?.(where gladly expresses some state of mind of the agent ?Jo?) (?Louisa May Alcott ? Little Women?, p.94).

Adverbs like carefully ,anxiously, slowly, gladly will be referred to as adverbs of state-of-mind. Some adverbs help to characterize the action indicated by the verb, as in:

?I was about to speak to him rather sharply, when there was a sudden hush and I realized that the King and Queen had come?.(W.Somerset Maugham ?Lord Mountdrago?, p.170).

?Mr. Brooke obediently began the story, with the handsome brown eyes steadfastly fixed upon the sunshine?.( ?Louisa May Alcott ? Little Women?, p. 104).

?Helen must be categorically, but indirectly assured that he never thought of such a thing?.( James Gould Cozzens ?By Love Possesed?p.34)

Adverbs like sharply, obediently, categorically, indirectly belong to the class of manner adverbs. Some adverbs indicate an evaluation of the actor?s participation in the event, as in:

?They got extraordinarily clever at translating these in the twinkling of an eye to pounds and ounces? .( Bertrice Small ? Love Wild and Fair? p.447)

?He stood on and on, silent and immobile, gazing steadfastly, and then, if you took no notice of him, he moved slowly to the next table?.(W.Somerset Maughmam ?The Bum?, p.115).

?In that vacant but anxious bemusement that slightly stunned slowness of mind, even the obvious could come as a surprise? (James Gould Cozzens ?By Love Possesed?p.538).

Adverbs like extraordinarily, steadfastly, slowly and slightly are called evaluative adverbs. Some adverbs indicate aspects of the result of an event, as in :

?While with absent motions, the little Christ took the pen from the table and wrote her name legibly?.( James Gould Cozzens ?By Love Possessed? p. 330).

?He knew correctly that she was being forced, for he was sensitive to people?.( Bertrice Small ? Love Wild and Fair? p.489)

Adverbs like correctly and legibly will be called adverbs of result.

There are several different ways of analysing the class of adverbs of state-of-mind. For example, some (carefully) of these adverbs ascribe some state of mind to only the agent, while the others (anxiously, gladly,) have the dual functions of attributing some state of mind to either the agent or the patient .There are also adverbial characterizations having to do with the volition and intent of the agent in respect to the execution of the action.

Some state-of-mind adverbs are ambiguous between the case where the state of mind is ascribed to the actor during the period preceding the action indicated by the verb and the case where the state-of-mind is imputed to the actor during the action. Thus:

?I don?t go so far as to say that Freddy deliberately avoids them?, she said softly. ( Bertrice Small ? Love Wild and Fair?p.306).

We can judge from the above sentence, that either Freddy avoids them from deliberation or that he avoids with deliberation. The ambiguity, which is characteristic of some state-of-mind adverbs (the exact scope of this class of adverbs is difficult to delineate), can often be resolved by the position of the adverbs in a sentence, either before or after the verb signifying the action.

Some adverbs characterize the result of the action identified by the verb, rather than the action per se. When Patrick wrote his name legibly, what he wrote was legible. Here it is senseless to interpret the action in question as characterizing the manner in which the action of writing is carried out as being legible. Likewise, when someone states something truthfully, conclusively, implausibly and un- justifiably, etc. what was stated was respectively truthful, conclusive, implausible and unjustifiable, etc.

Action is a fairly complex notion. Three important ideas revolve around it: the state of mind of the actor, the actual performance of action, and the end result of action. Characterization of an action may be given to any of these three elements and natural languages may have provisions for separately characterizing each of them or in many cases it may lack syntactic devices for consistently sorting them out and characterizing them. If an action is characterized as slow, rapid, smooth or rough, it is the way in which the action goes on. If an action is characterized as correct or wrong, it is the result of the action that is being judged. A great majority of action-characterizing adverbs in English are either state-of mind adverbs or evaluative adverbs, e.g. wisely, foolishly, nobly and devotedly, etc.

Degree adverbs indicate the degree or extent of a certain quality or state and presuppose an analysis of the grading properties in the semantics of adjectives. These adverbs either serve to express descriptively something about the degree, as in ?He was very stout? or indicate the speaker?s reaction to the degree, as in ?He was a Russian, a tall fellow, but amazingly stout?. The second type of degree adverbs comes from attitude adverbs: surprisingly, remarkably and amazingly, etc. and may be thought of as occupying a midpoint between attitude and descriptive degree adverbs. Degree adverb must be thought of as having different grading properties from those of adjectives. Absolutely, according to Lakoff (1970), is restricted to occur only with the end points on the same scale and vary may occur with the mid-points on such a scale. If this is in fact the case, then absolutely and very together define sets of all adjectives graded in this way along certain dimensions. Absolutely impossible/necessary, but very possible. The second type of degree adverbs introduce an extra dimension of the speaker?s reaction. Surprisingly as an attitude adverb is predicted of a fact, as in:

?Not very surprisingly, Ralph had lost his nerve, had run; not very surprisingly, Helen, distracted, found this too bad to bear?. (James Gould Cozzens ?By Love Possessed? p.544).

A at the same time surprisingly is predicate of degree, as in;

?The journey south was surprisingly swift and smooth, and they suffered no weakness?.( Bertrice Small ? Love Wild and Fair?p.157).

The class of both informative and viewpoint adverbs occur in action and non-action sentences. They contribute only indirectly in describing the event, identifiable by the contributions of actor, action, and result. These adverbs show the speaker?s role with respect to the event and may be thought of as coming from a higher clause; and the higher clause is not part of the sentence at which the descriptive core of the event may be said to be located.

The class of performative adverbs includes frankly, honestly, strictly, truthfully, consequently, as a matter of fact. Some performative adverbs indicate the speaker?s state of mind in performing a speech act, as in:

?Frankly, he lost his control ?after a while he tore his head away from him?.( Bertrice Small ? Love Wild and Fair?p.472).

Viewpoint adverbs are akin to the theme of discourse and hence usually appear in the beginning of a sentence. This class includes theoretically, artistically, emotionally, personally, fundamentally, basically, generally and essentially, etc. Some of these adverbs indicate precisely the viewpoints around which discourse revolves, as in:

?Religiously, they seemed to be the willing dupes of their priests??( James Gould Cozzens ?By Love Possessed? p.64).

?Ceremoniously, Chet was escorting her to the door? (James Gould Cozzens ?By Love Possesed?p.511).

Some take a vague viewpoint as in:

?Personally, I do not know the day when Cyra died?, she said. (Bertrice Small ? Love Wild and Fair?p.556).

The class of conjunctive adverbs(similarly, consequently, equally, accordingly) includes adverbs used in much the same way as conjunctions and some people may prefer to call some of these, such as again, also, yet, conjunctions rather than adverbs. Conjunctive adverbs are not purely conjunctions; they conjoin sentences and qualify them in a certain way. The semantics of these adverbs must be understood in relation to a wider context than the domain of a single sentence. Similarly ,for example, may be treated as a predicate relating to assert the similarly, in some sense, of the two arguments.

Both epistemic and attitudinal adverbs are generally loosely attached to the sentences. They are used to orient the hearer towards the statement in which they occur and explain to the hearer how the statement is to be taken. These are adverbs like possibly, probably, necessarily, undoubtedly, certainly, clearly, luckily, supposedly, admittedly, presumably, unfortunately, conceivably, paradoxically, naturally, , interestingly, wisely and so forth. Epistemic and attitudinal adverbs, according to Shwan-Fan Huang, modulate the whole statement by giving an explanation as to how the sentences are to be understood. The ways in which they do this may be thought of as being aids to placing the statements against evidential, logical, emotional, moral and intellectual backgrounds.

Manner adverbs may contribute to the interpretation of sentences as carrying the ideas of facts or states of affairs as well. Some sentences describe events, some report facts. Both facts and events are different entities. It is events, not facts that occur, take place, begin, last and end. But only facts can be stated, denied, surprising or obvious. Events can be expresses as in:

?Alfred Revere, quietly coming from the door, quietly passed them, moving inconspicuous, into a back pew?.(James Gould Cozzens ?By Love Possesed?p.518).

?She was deliberately playing the part of the dear woman and within her she bubbled with amusement? (S.Maugham ?The Door of Opportunity? p.251).

?He had found the envelope quickly enough, and at the buzz of the little switchboard across the office, he was able to carry Helen?s will in with him to his desk.?( James Gould Cozzens ?By Love Possesed? p.535).

?Beside the car stood Rodney Revere, rapidly waving a large envelope at them?.( James Gould Cozzens ?By Love Possesed? p.67).

Adverbs used in the above sentences show how the events took place. Though there is no such class of sentences (fact sentences) totally distinguishable from event sentences, event sentences in many cases express a fact because of the semantic contributions of attitude adverbs.

Adverbs may be described as the principal ways in which the language users characterize the conditions and circumstances; the hows and wherefores of actions and events:

?Judge Lowe had involuntarily composed, then voluntarily put away, a question that Arthur Winner, too, had asked himself?? (James Gould Cozzens ?By Love Possessed? p.55).

?He walked swiftly back into the house with his precious burden?. ( Bertrice Small ?Love Wild and Fair?p.197).

?Cat watched indulgently, barely nibbling as the earl stuffed himself?( Bertrice Small ? Love Wild and Fair?p.250)

As these examples indicate, the conditions and circumstances of the events and actions characterized by the verbs are adverbially expressed. Adverbial and verbal expressions have decided points of contact. The conditions of an event is not always an absolutely different phenomenon from the action itself. Accordingly such actions will sometimes require verbal and sometimes adverbial expressions. In a sentence like :

?Home was seriously anxious and was sure that lord of Hermitage had done something wrong?.( Bertrice Small ? Love Wild and Fair? p.232).

It is difficult to say whether Home was anxious because he was serious or serious because he was anxious, and so we may conclude that he was both serious and anxious.

An adverbs is defined semantically as a function of function. Thus, manner adverbs are used to characterize modes of action; state-of-mind adverbs to impute mental states to the actor; resultative adverbs to describe aspects of the result of an event; epistemic adverbs to tell us how statements are to be understood; attitudinal adverbs to express the speaker?s external evaluation of facts or n event as whole; performative adverbs like frankly also impute states of mind, not to the actor, but to the speaker.

The function of adverbs, such as that of manner adverbs, in ,developing? a predicate often calls for a distinction in morphological shape. Hence, most adverbs of manner in English are distinct from, but morphologically related to adjectives: e.g. careful, carefully .In this way the attribute indicated by the adjective is made appropriate to characterize a verb and the attribute idea is still present, as in:

?Laurie told me how fond Mr. Lawrence used to be of the child who died, and how he kept all her little things carefully?.(?Louisa May Alcott ? Little Women? p. 52).

Part II

Date: 2016-06-12; view: 538