Syntagmatic valency of adverbs and its actualization in speech

It follows that adverbs could realize their syntactic valent properties in 7 models of contact combinability and 21 models of distant combinability. But the results of numerous studies demonstrate that the following models of syntactic combinability of adverbs are typical for modern English:.

English adverbs realize their syntactic valent properties in all of 7 models of contact combinability and only in 7 (out of 21) models of distant combinability. The nature of restrictions on combinability of adverbs in 14 models of distant combinability in some cases is conditioned by relations of objects and phenomena of extralinguistic reality (N + conj + Adv, V + conj + Adv, Adv + link + Adj, Adv + link + Adv, Adv + link + N, Adv + link + V, Adj + link + Adv, Adv + prp + Adj, Adv + prp + Adv, Adv + prp + V, Adj + prp + Adv, V + prp + Adv), in other cases it is conditioned by the system of the language (Adv + conj + N, V + link + Adv).

Morphological characteristics of the notional units can influence their syntactic valent properties or they can remain neutral with respect to these properties. For instance, the category of degrees of comparison of adverbs remains neutral with respect to valent properties of notional units in such models of combinability as Adv + Adv (well enough, better enough), Adj + Adv (good enough, better enough), V + Adv (move slowly, move more slowly), Adv + prp + N (early in February, earlier in February).

The meaning of models of combinability of English adverbs with other notional units is determined by semantic relations which occur in the process of their interaction.

In accord with their categorial meaning, adverbs are characterised by combinability with verbs, adjectives and words of adverbial nature. The functions of adverbs in these combinations consist in expressing different adverbial modifiers. Adverbs can also refer to whole situations; in this function they are considered under the heading of situation-"determinants":

The woman was crying hysterically. (an adverbial modifier of manner, in left-hand contact combination with the verb-predicate)

Wilson looked at him appraisingly. (an adverbial modifier of manner, in left-hand distant combination with the verb-predicate)

Without undressing she sat down to the poems, nervously anxious to like them... (an adverbial modifier of property qualification, in right-hand combination with a post-positional stative attribute-adjective)

You've gotten awfully brave, awfully suddenly. (an adverbial modifier of intensity, in right-hand combination with an adverb-aspective determinant of the situation)

Then he stamps his boots again and advances into the room. (two adverbial determinants of the situation: the first — of time, in right-hand combination with the modified predicative construction; the second — of recurrence, in left-hand combination with the modified predicative construction)

Adverbs can also combine with nouns acquiring in such cases a very peculiar adverbial-attributive function, essentially in post-position, but in some cases also in pre-position:

The world today presents a picture radically different from what it was before the Second World War.

Our vigil overnight was rewarded by good news: the operation seemed to have succeeded.

Franklin D. Roosevelt, the then President of the United States, proclaimed the "New Deal" — a new Government economic policy.

The use of adverbs in outwardly attributive positions in such and like examples appears to be in contradiction with the functional destination of the adverb — a word that is intended to qualify a non-nounal syntactic element by definition.

However, this seeming inconsistence of the theoretical interpretation of adverbs with their actual uses can be clarified and resolved in the light of the syntactic principle of nominalisation elaborated within the framework of the theory of paradigmatic syntax [13, 221]. In accord with this principle, each predicative syntactic construction paradigmatically correlates with a noun-phrase displaying basically the same semantic relations between its notional constituents. A predicative construction can be actually changed into a noun-phrase, by which change the dynamic situation expressed by the predicative construction receives a static name. Now, adverbs-determinants modifying in constructions of this kind the situation as a whole, are preserved in the corresponding nominalised phrases without a change in their inherent functional status:

The world that exists today. → The world today.

We kept vigil overnight. → Our vigil overnight.

Then he was the President. → The then President.

These paradigmatic transformational correlations explain the type of connection between the noun and its adverbial attribute even in cases where direct transformational changes would not be quite consistent with the concrete contextual features of constructions [13, 221]. What is important here, is the fact that the adverb used to modify a noun actually relates to the whole corresponding situation underlying the noun phrase. 

 

3.2 Semantic and syntactic properties of adverbs of degree

Expounded in this chapter is the class of adverbs of degree as one of the most numerous and syntagmatically active classes of adverbs.

In English there is a class of lexical elements known as adverbs of degree or intensifiers. They are so labeled because they are considered to operate on certain linguistic elements to magnify the degree of intensification or to amplify certain qualities.

There is a substantial discrepancy of opinion concerning the terminology related to adverbs of degree. It can be argued that intensifier is a subcategory of adverbs of degree, since some (most) adverbs of degree are not necessarily intensifying. Another view is that an intensifier is a different category altogether. In this paper neither of these distinctions will be made, but adverb of degree and intensifier will be used interchangeably. The main reason for this is that there seems to be no distinction between degree adverb and intensifying adverb in academic literature.

There has been considerable academic interest in such adverbs for many years. Stoffel discusses intensive adverbs, noting that those which etymologically express completeness have a tendency to weaken over time. There is a high turnover of such words and this area of language changes relatively quickly.

Stoffel’s terms, ‘intensives’ and ‘downtoners’, are adopted by Quirk in the seminal Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language. Intensification is a pervasive function in language. Dwight Bolinger expands the discussion of intensifiers from the use of adverbs to qualify adjectives and adverbs, to these and other parts of speech modifying the strength of nouns and verbs as well such as the intensifying adjective qualifying the noun:

It was utter heaven.

He notes that some syntactic forms also function as intensifiers:

He talked back to her and was she mad!

More recently, intensifiers have been the object of corpus research. Partington relates the delexicalisation of intensifiers to syntactic flexibility. In his view the lower the semantic content of an intensifier, the more restricted the syntactic environments in which it may occur. The more restricted the syntactic flexibility of an item, the more reduced is its semantic potential.

That is, an intensifier like ‘extremely’  today occurs almost exclusively in premodifying position, whereas in the past it was also comfortable in postmodifying position:

A sinecure which would fitt me extremely.

Or it could occupy position before a prepositional phrase:

Two humours equall abounding together, extremely in superfluite.

This in turn relates to the phenomenon of collocation. In fact, the more delexicalised an intensifier, the more widely it collocates: the greater the range and number of modifiers it combines with. In other words, the less meaning is contained within the intensifier itself, the more it will acquire from its surrounding co-text.

Thus, adverbs of degree (or intensifiers) are those adverbs which function to increase or tone down the strength of another word in the sentence, usually an adjective, verb or another adverb. Intensifiers are said to have three different functions: they can emphasize, amplify, or downtone .

Adverbs of degree exhibit a number of syntactic and semantic properties typical of an adverb. They are often used, for example, in a preverbal (including adjectival) position and form a syntactic sequence:

Adjective (Phrase) / Verb +Adverb of degree  (Phrase)

e.g.: (1): Quitting my old job was an extremely difficult decision.

(2): He hardly noticed what she was saying.

(3): I am too tired to go out tonight.

(4): You absolutely have to confront this belief.

Examples (1)-(4) also represent some of the commonly recognized syntactic functions of adverbial elements, namely, as a modifier modifying a single verb or an adjective, or as an adverbial affecting the whole adjectival or verbal phrase. Thus, in example (1) extremely can be seen as modifying the adjective difficult, in (2) hardly modifies the verb notice, and in (3) and (4) adverbs of degree too and absolutely modify, respectively, verbal expressions.

Some intensifiers, however, occupy different position in the sentence. For instance, enough as an adverb meaning 'to the necessary degree', when it modifies an adjective or another adverb, is placed in post-position to them:

Is your coffee hot enough? (adjective)

He didn't work hard enough. (adverb)

It also goes before nouns, and means 'as much as is necessary'. In this case it is not an adverb, but a 'determiner':

We have enough bread .

They don't have enough food.

Adverbs of degree can also modify certain kinds of prepositional 
phrases:

They lived nearly on the top of the hill.

I'm almost through with my work.

His remarks were not quite to the point.

There are a few intensifiers in English which can function as attributes modifying nouns:

He was fully master of the situation.

She was quite a child.

While the syntax and semantics of intensifiers are generally well understood, thanks to the work of descriptive grammarians, little has been done to investigate other patterns connected with intensifiers, notably, their freestanding use. The freestanding use here refers to a situation where adverb of degree is not followed by any adjectival or verbal predicate. This is illustrated by examples below:

(1)  An interview between a reporter and a famous soprano:

Reporter: Was it a bit learning process doing that recording session with the playbacks?

Soprano: Oh, absolutely, also because it was one of my earliest recordings, and in fact in every recording, and in every performance, I learn something.

(2)  A dialogue between a parent and a child:

Parent: Have you finished your essay?

Child: Almost. I didn’t have enough time for that.

Quirk R. proposes a number of adverbial categories for English. Relevant here are the categories of adjuncts and disjuncts, and the freestanding use of intensifiers presented in the above examples would be instances of disjuncts. The scholar mentions that unlike the intensifier adjuncts, which have a narrow orientation, disjuncts are more freestanding: they are syntactically more detached and have a scope that extends over the sentence as a whole. In fact Quirk R. notes that not only can disjuncts stand alone, but they also can be responses to questions or can be used as a comment on a previous utterance, usually accompanied by ‘yes’ or ‘no’. Clearly the distinction made by Quirk between adjuncts and disjuncts is a useful one. Nevertheless a number of important properties concerning the freestanding disjuncts absolutely and almost have not been fully explored.

Firstly, the adverbial element absolutely is considered by Quirk R. as both an adjunct and a disjunct. The question is whether there is any connection between the adjunct, dependent use and the disjunct, freestanding use.

Secondly, the freestanding pattern, as exemplified above, is interesting not only in terms of the deviant syntactic behavior (a modifier without a head) from the point of view of a typical adverb, but also in terms of semantics and interactive pragmatics. From a semantic point of view, even without any adjectives or verbal elements (i.e., syntactic heads that are supposed to indicate the content of the semantic scale), absolutely alone can imply a positive answer or an affirmative action. Thus, in example even though the interviewee does not state explicitly whether she agrees with the interviewer’s assessment, the interviewer and the reader can infer unequivocally that she does.

Lastly, Quirk R. asserts that disjuncts are usually accompanied by ‘yes’ or ‘no’. This statement leaves an impression that both affirmative and negative answering tokens are possible candidates with the disjuncts. However, there are preferred patterns in actual language use. It is necessary to look at actual language use and understand language structure, including modification structure, as a dynamic, unsettled phenomenon. The epistemic propensity of the lexical item and the context in which the modifier is used gives rise to the independent use.

 

 

 

 

 

 

                                                                                                                                                 Conclusion   

 

The categorical meaning of the adverb is secondary property which implies qualitative, quantitative, or circumstantial characteristics of actions, states or qualities. In accordance with their categorial meaning, adverbs are characterised by combinability with verbs, adjectives and words of adverbial nature. The functions of adverbs in these combinations consist in expressing different adverbial modifiers. Adverbs can also refer to whole situations.

The only pattern of morphological change for adverbs is the same as for adjectives, the degrees of comparison. With regard to the category of the degrees of comparison adverbs (like adjectives) fall into comparables and non-comparables. The number of non-comparables is much greater among adverbs than among adjectives. Only adverbs of manner and certain adverbs of time and place can form degrees of comparison.

In accord with their word-building structure adverbs may be simple, derived, compound and composite. Simple adverbs are rather few, and nearly all of them display functional semantics, mostly of pronominal character. The typical adverbial affixes in affixal derivation are, first and foremost, the basic and only productive adverbial suffix –ly and then a couple of others of limited distribution.

Adverbs may perform different functions, modifying different types of words, phrases, sentences. Adverbs may function as adverbial modifiers of manner, place, time, degree to a finite or non-finite form of the verb.

Falling back on the compiled list of relevant lexical units drawn from the currently existing dictionaries and miscellaneous theoretical sources, the paper offers a semantic classification of adverbs into 10 classes and lexico-grammatical classification into 3 classes.

Adverbs are commonly divided into qualitative, quantitative and circumstantial. Qualitative adverbs express immediate, inherently non-graded qualities of actions and other qualities. The adverbs considered as quantitative include words of degree. These are specific lexical units of semi-functional nature expressing quality measure, or gradational evaluation of qualities. The functional circumstantial adverbs are of pronominal nature.

According to their meaning, adverbs fall into the following classes: adverbs of time, adverbs of frequency, adverbs of place and direction, adverbs of manner, adverbs of degree or intensifiers, attitudinal adverbs, viewpoint adverbs, and conjunctive adverbs.

The results of research reveal that English adverbs realize their syntactic valent properties in 7 models of contact combinability and in 7 models of distant combinability. The nature of restrictions on combinability of adverbs in 14 models of distant combinability in some cases is conditioned by relations of objects and phenomena of extralinguistic reality, in other cases it is conditioned by the system of the language, namely, by the distribution of adverbs which either favours or impedes the realization of their valent properties [12]. Morphological characteristics of adverbs and their collocates are either conducive or non-conducive or neutral to the adverb realizing its syntactic valency. Thus, adverbs of manner saying how an action is performed can freely occur with dynamic verbs, but not with stative verbs.

The meaning of models of combinability of English adverbs with other notional units is determined by semantic relations which occur in the process of their interaction.

One of the most syntagmatically active groups of adverbs is the adverbs of degree or intensifiers. The analysis leads to conclude that the more delexicalised an intensifier, the more widely it collocates: the greater the range and number of modifiers it combines with. In other words, the less meaning is contained within the intensifier itself, the more it will acquire from its surrounding co-text. Some degree adverbs tend to be distinguished in terms of positive, neutral or negative attitude.

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