The Distribution of Adverbial Phrases in English (original) (raw)
English sentence adverbials: Their syntax and their intonation in British English
Lingua, 1974
'ihe probiems of isoiating sentence adverbiais as a class are discussed. An attempt is then trade to subcaiegorise adverbials to take account of their trans.ormational relations and other sj ntactic characteristics. The intonation of English sentence adverbials is then considered with sibecid reference to sentence-initial position. It is found thiat there are correlations between i! tonation and syntactic class; and tnat other factors conditioning choice of intonation include: tI\e inherent semantics of the adverb; whether it modifies a sentence containing "new" or " :iven" information; and the attitude of the speaker. The interaction of these various factors is cl>nsidered in some detail. The findings are tested against informant reaction tests. Syntax We began this piece of work' by asking ourselves what factors cr,~tribute to the selection of the appropriate British English intonation for a given sentence adverbial. It soon became clear that, although other factors were involved, the question of which syntactic subclass the adverbial belonged to was a prime factor, and that it was necessary to examine the syntax of the adverbia sand thus also their semanticsin detail. Iln this first section we carry out this syntactic-semantic examination; in the second section we examine some aspects of the intonation of the adverbials in the light of our syntactic findings. By an ADVERBIAL we wish to denote any 'adjunct' or modifier uzd in a non-adjectival way. An adverbial may be a simple lexical item of the class ADVERB like perhaps or lzere; alternatively it may be of the structure ADJECTIVE (+-ly); or (PREPOSITION+) NOUN 1 We are indebted to D.A. Cruse for a number of valuable suggestions and comments. We are also grateful to our other department colleagues for their comments ai; willingness to act as informants. 2 D.J. AIlerton and A. Outtenden, English sentence a-'verbials PIIRASE; or PREPOSITION (+NOUN PHRASE) e.g. fast, Zoud(Zy), carefully; last night, (uuring) tnis qfternoon, in the evening, after (the meeting). We shall concentrate our attention on one word adverbs rather than adverbial phrases, i.e. on the first two types listed above. Our concern here is sentence adverbials, and wz must first isolate these as a class. Several tests have been proposed for a sentence adverbial. One is that sentence adverbials are adverbials formed from adjectives which can take an abstract subject nominal (Schreiber 1971) e.g., The idea was unforth late. This will obviously not cover adverbials which are not derived from adjectives (though a deep structure could of course be arrazged co that this were so in every case). Nor does it cover by arry means all classes of sentence adverb, e.g. the types exemplified by frankly, bri$!y, linguistically. More realistically, they may be defined according to criteria of transformation, co-occurrence, position and intonation (see A!!ertoni fort!!coming). It will prove most fruitful to take transformational potential as the most reliable guide both for identifying sentence as a class and for determining their subc!asses, and we develop this fully below. As regards co-occurrence, sentence adverbials are neutral, whereas manner and time adverbials for example have co-occurrence restrictions with the lexical verb and the auxiliary respectively. Four different positions within the sentence may be taken by most' sentence adverbs: initial; medial before the auxiliary; medial after the auxiliary but before the lexical verb; final position, e.g. Probably John was hurt. John probably was hu.rt. John was probably hurt. John was hurt, probably. The distinction between the two medial positions is of course neutralized if no auxiliary is present, e.g. John probably hurt himself. Many non-sentence adverbs, on the other hand, are restricted in their occurrence in these positions, e.g. degree adverbs like slightly may occur only before the lexical verb, or finally, cf.: * S!ightly John was hurt. * John slightly was hurt. John was slightly hurt. John was hurt slightly.
Intensifying adverbs in the English language by Evgeniya V. Zhiber and Larisa V. Korotina
Training Language and Culture, 2019
The article provides an analysis of various aspects of intensification in the English language (colloquial and newspaper), intensifying adverbs in particular. The processes of grammaticalisation and delexicalisation observed in the evolution of intensifying adverbs are described. The author also looks into the renewal and boundedness of intensifying adverbs, provides an overview of modern classifications of intensifying adverbs, and offers statistics on the frequency of occurrence of intensifying adverbs to illustrate their usage in spoken discourse and newspaper language. The findings assume that less intensification is used in written discourse whereas more intensification is employed in spoken discourse, which suggests that the decline in intensification is higher as the formality of the register increases, and vice versa.
An analysis of adverbs in appositives
This paper presents an investigation into the functional structure of appositives. Taking hierarchy of adverbs and functional categories as a point of departure, the analysis shows that all but one of Cinque's adverb classes can be found in appositives. The exception concerns speech act adverbs. Because appositives are non-finite, they lack phi features, resulting in an inability to represent discourse roles such as Speaker. Speech act adverbs obligatorily select Speaker as an argument, accounting for their failure to appear in non-finite structures such as appositives.
The Loss of English Directional Adverbs: An Empirical Study
Zanco Journal of Humanity Sciences, 2020
Language as a constantly changing aspect of life experiences different changes that include, inter alia, vocabulary, grammar, sounds. Some of the words that were used in Old English are no longer in use. This paper deals with the loss of a number of directional adverbs that were vitally in use in Old English while disappeared in Present Day English (PDE). A group of seven adverbs were selected to serve as data for this research. Each adverb is examined separately in the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA), the Corpus of Historical American English (COHA), and Oxford English Dictionary (OED) to find their frequency, meaning, and the context of their usage within two centuries. The results showed that there was a prominent decline in the frequency of the given adverbs. Nevertheless, the frequency rates fluctuated through decades to reach an absolute disappearance in Present Day English. Due to the lack of the scholarly work on this issue, the reason behind the loss of these adverbs is remained unclear.
Lexicogrammatical features of adverbs in advanced learner English
ITL - International Journal of Applied Linguistics, 2015
This paper explores the use of -ly adverbs by Norwegian advanced learners of English compared to that of native speakers. The investigation is based on two corpora of novice academic English: VESPA and BAWE. It considers features of lexis (frequencies, style, meanings, collocational patterns) as well as of syntax, i.e. whether the adverbs function as adjuncts, disjuncts, conjuncts or modifiers in adjective or adverb phrases. The learners make few clear mistakes with adverbs, but there are important frequency differences between the corpora concerning lexical choice and semantic and syntactic functions. Learners overuse adverbs with modal meaning but underuse phrase-modifying adverbs. Most adjunct types are also underused. At several points, the native speakers prove to have a greater lexical repertoire.
English Language and Linguistics, 2013
Reviewed by Bernd Kortmann, University of Freiburg "Adverbials may be regarded as a ragbag category in the linguistics system." It is hard to think of anyone who might want to take issue with the opening statement of the monograph under review. In fact, it is hard to think of any domain of grammar (not only English grammar) which is messier than the one of adverbials. For this reason alone anyone who volunteers to tackle the Herculean task of writing a(nother) comprehensive book on the by far largest subgroup of adverbials, namely adjuncts, must be admired for their courage and stamina. It must be someone who has explored the territory for a long time and acquired intimate knowledge, which is indeed the case for Hilda Hasselgård, who in 1996 published a first monograph on the two largest semantic classes of adverbials, more exactly on Where and When: Positional and Functional Conventions for Sequences of Time and Space Adverbials in Present-Day English (see references). Hasselgård's new book stands in the tradition of Greenbaum's seminal Studies in English Adverbial Usage (1969) and its successor publications (in Quirk et al. 1972 and 1985, with the relevant chapters in both pillars of English reference grammars having been authored by Sidney Greenbaum, and in Biber et al. 1999) and truly complements Greenbaum's 1969 classic by focussing on adjuncts. While Greenbaum was solely concerned with linking adverbs, i.e. conjuncts and disjuncts, Hasselgård restricts her study to adjuncts, including under this heading, following Biber et al. 1999, "all time and degree adverbials along with focus and viewpoint adverbials" (p. 23), i.e. adverbials classified as subjuncts in Quirk et al. (1985). The overall approach Hasselgård adopts is one that is descriptive, broadly functional and more (but not too) narrowly Hallidayan, which is reflected among other things by her usage-in-text/discourse perspective on adjuncts (notably their use on the textual and interpersonal levels of communication). This perspective is also prominently stated in the cover blurb, where, besides pointing to usage differences of adverbials across text types, the reader is informed as follows: "In using real texts, Hasselgård identifies a challenge for the classification of adjuncts, and also highlights the fact that some adjuncts have uses that extend into the textual and interpersonal domains, obscuring the traditional divisions between adjuncts, disjuncts and conjuncts." The volume comprises almost exactly 300 text pages and is organized into four parts with altogether 13 chapters. Part I (3-63) outlines the overall framework for Hasselgård's take on the field of adverbials, in general, and adjuncts, in particular. It offers the expectable background information concerning the major research questions, materials and methods, and organisation of the book (Chapter 1) and an overview of the classifications of adverbials as discussed in the literature (Chapter 2). In Chapter 3 the focus is on the syntactic positions of adverbials in clauses and sentences (essentially, initial, medial, end position) and the semantics, especially the semantic scope, of adverbials (in general and depending on their position). Part II (67-183) is concerned with the positions of adverbials. It consists of five chapters, the first three of which address adverbials in initial, medial and end position respectively (Chapters 4-6). Chapter 7 is exclusively concerned with (it-) cleft focus position of adjuncts and Chapter 8 with the combination of adjuncts and, especially, combination of their positions. The overarching topic of Part III (187-256) is semantics, more exactly subtypes, frequencies and usage of different semantic types of adjuncts (adjuncts of time and space in Chapter 9, of manner and contingency in Chapter 10, and of respect, focus, degree, etc. in Chapter 11). The synoptic Part IV (259-305) draws together the major findings from
The Difficulty of English Adverbial Constructions for the Foreign Learners
Batman University Journal of Life Sciences, 2017
ÖZ Bu çalışmanın amacı İngilizce zarf yapılarının(cümlecik) yabancı veya ikinci dil öğrenenler için ne tür zorluk ya da yük olduğunu aydınlatmaktır. Bu bağlamda, bu yapıların sözdizimsel yapısı araştırıldı. Bu, yapılarını vurgulayarak ve gramer birimi olarak zarf cümleciklerinin sözdizimsel özellikleri araştırılarak yapıldı. İngilizce konuşan dünyada mevcut olan en önemli kitaplar incelendi. Bu bütünce (corpus) analiz, yan cümle olarak sürekli değişen bazı zarf yapıların öğrenenler için cümle işleminde bir sorun olduğunu gösterdi. Yapısındaki değişimlerin yabancı öğrenenler için bir yük olduğu kanıtlandı. Bundan başka, çalışma zarf yapılarının İngiliz dilinin tipolojik sözdizimine ters düştüğünü vurguluyor; yani İngilizcenin kurallı söz dizimi bu işlemler tarafından ihlal ediliyor. Yine sınıflandırmaları, kısaltılmaları ve devrik olmaları yabancı öğrenenler için büyük sıkıntıdırlar. ABSTRACT The purpose of this paper is to bring to the light what difficulties or burden the English Adverbial Clauses have for foreign language learners (FLLs) or second language learners (SLLs) In this context, the syntactic structure of such grammatical category has been examined. This has been done by examining the syntactic properties of adverbial clauses as grammatical unity by emphasising their structures. The most important books that are available in the English speaking world have been inquired. This corpus analysis has depicted that steadily changing of some adverbial clauses as subordinates is a problem for the learners in sentence processing. The varieties of the construction have proved to be a burden for the foreign learners. Moreover, the study underlines that the adverbial constructions contradict with the typological word order (SVO) of English language i.e. the canonical word order of English is violated through these operations. Again the classifications, the reduction and the inversion of them are great challenges for the foreign learners.