2015-06-30
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Plan
- The Adverb as part of speech.
- Structural and semantic types of adverbs.
- The category of comparison.
- Derivation of adverbs.
The name “adverb” comes from Latin ad, meaning to, and verbum, meaning “a word”, “a verb”. According to some definitions, adverb is an indeclinable part of speech, the main function of which was to limit or extend the meaning of a verb. It adds more information about place, time, circumstance, manner, course, degree etc. to a verb, adjective and another adverb: to speak kindly, incredibly deep, just in time, too quickly.
There is very much in common between adjectives and adverbs, the relation of an adverb to a verb being like that of an adjective to a noun: to qualify, to limit, to individualize the meaning of the main word: e.g. a serious remark – to remark seriously; a simple answer – to answer simply.
Adverbs are commonly divided into qualitative, quantitative and circumstantial.
Qualitative adverbs express immediate, inherently non-graded qualities of actions and other qualities. The typical adverbs of this kind are adverbs in -ly: simp ly, right ly, open ly, tight ly, expressive ly, present ly.
The adverb is a part of speech characterized by the following features:
- The lexico-grammatical meaning of “qualitative, quantitative or circumstantial characteristics of actions, states or qualities”.
- The category of degrees of comparison.
- The typical stem-building affixes, as in tight-ly, side-ways, clock-wise, back-wards, a-shore etc.
- Its unilateral combinability with verbs, adjectives, adverbs, less regularly with adlinks and nouns.
- The function of adverbial complement, sometimes other functions.
Now we shall speak about each feature in detail.
The suffix -ly is agglutinatively added to any type of stem ending
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in a vowel: austere- ly, entire- ly;
in a consonant (voiced): wise- ly;
in a sonant: grim- ly;
in a consonant (voiceless): spontaneous- ly.
In some words the final -e is dropped in writing: able – abl y, double – doubl y, gentle – gentl y, humble – humbl y, due – dul y, true – trul y, whole – wholl y (not to confuse with holy). But: late ly, sure ly, strange ly.
The quantitative adverbs include words of degree. These are specific lexical units of semi-functional nature expressing quality measure, or gradational evaluation of qualities. There are several sets of quantitative adverbs classed as intensifiers: of high degree: very, quite, entirely, utterly, highly, greatly, perfectly, absolutely, pretty, much; of excessive degree: too, awfully, tremendously, dreadfully, terrifically; of unexpected degree: surprisingly, astonishingly, amazingly; of moderate degree: fairly, comparatively, relatively, moderately, rather; of low degree: slightly, a little, a bit; of approximate degree: almost, nearly; of optimal degree: enough, sufficiently, adequately; of inadequate degree: insufficiently, intolerably, unbearably, ridiculously; of underdegree: hardly, scarcely.
As we see, the degree adverbs, though usually described as “quantitative”, in reality make a specific variety of qualitative words or rather some sort of intermediate qualitative-quantitative words. In this function they differ from genuine quantitative adverbs which are directly related to the numerals and thereby form sets of words of pronominal character. Here belong twice, thrice, four times, twofold, threefold, manifold etc.
The third group of adverbs is circumstantial adverbs. Here belong adverbs of
time: soon, tomorrow, now and then, yesterday, daily, ever, now, ago;
frequency: often, seldom, again, ever, rarely;
relative place: near, far, everywhere, thereabout, hereto;
manner: well, accurately, badly, arm in arm;
negative implication: nay, nowise, hardly, never;
degree: almost (perfect), good (enough), (not) altogether (bad) etc.
There are numerous word-combinations that function like adverbs: in time, on time, at home, in Paris, at school, arm in arm, face to face, one by one etc.
As far as grammatical-morphological categories are concerned, we can hardly speak of them unless we give a status of a category to forms of degrees of comparison of some adverbs. Only few adverbs form them synthetically: early – earli er, earli est; often – often er, often est; soon – soon er, soon est; comparison can be expressed analytically by repeating a word: again and again, by using another adverb for emphasis: just now, quite so. More adverbs (in -ly) take more and most to form degrees of comparison analytically: more friendly, most kindly, cf also with less friendly, least friendly: And it was, I think, by my generation, those who were young in the twenties, who grew up not during, but immediately after the First World War, that his (Elliot’s) influence was most deeply felt *.
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It may be said that cross-classes morphological analysis can demonstrate some tendencies in form- and word-building. Thus, there are words:
hap noun happy adjective (noun + suffix) happily adverb
hapless adjective (noun + suffix) happiness noun
haply adverb (noun + suffix)
haphazard adjective/noun (noun + noun)
perhaps adverb (per + noun plural),
in Middle English by hap(s)
where hap means “a luck”, happiness can be said to be “a very great hap”; haphazard is “a risky chance”; happy denotes “a lucky situation, or chance”, while hapless denotes “an unlucky one”, both positive and negative implications in adjectives result in derived nouns: positive – happiness, doubtful – haphazard.
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*See: The Idea of Literature // Английский литературно-критический очерк (на англ. яз.) / сост. Д. М. Урнов – М., 1979. – С. 282.
Another possible dimension of semantic (and morphological) categorization is a clear-cut, systemic way of referring to a more distant and less distant place, direction:
here there where nowhere
hither thither whither
ever never
Among the various types of adverbs, those formed from adjectives by means of the suffix -ly occupy the most representative place and pose a special problem.
The problem is caused by the very regularity of their derivation, the rule of which can be formulated quite simply: each qualitative adjective has a parallel adverb in -ly.
e.g. simple – simp ly
right – right ly
expressive – expressive ly
present – present ly
This regularity of formation accompanied by the general qualitative character of semantics gave cause to A. I. Smirnitsky to advance the view that both the sets of words belong to the same part of speech, the qualitative adverbs in -ly being in fact adjectives of specific combinability.
However M. Y. Bloch, admitting the strong point of the adjectival interpretation of qualitative adverbs in -ly, believes that the whole problem is not the problem of part-of-speech identity; it is a problem of inter-class connections, in particular, of inter-class division of functions and of the correlative status of the compared units in the lexical paradigm of nomination.
References:
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5. Ильиш Б. А. Строй современного английского языка: Теоретический курс: Учебное пособие. – М. –Л.: Просвещение, 1965. – С. 152-154.
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