Oriented -ingly adjuncts in Late Modern English

Abstract

This paper investigates the history of -ingly adjuncts (such as warningly and sneeringly) which are obtained from present participles and which occur mainly with verbs of saying, watching and motion. Such adverbs can be used in two different ways, depending on the content of their verbal bases. They can refer to a subjective evaluation of a perceptual input (e.g. warningly), thus triggering a manner interpretation. Alternatively, they can describe an independent event which is simultaneous with the main clause event (e.g. sneeringly). In either case, such -ingly adjuncts are classifiable as oriented adverbs since they can be predicated (through their verbal bases) of the main clause subject (in active sentences). On the basis of corpus evidence drawn from the Helsinki Corpus, ARCHER, CLMETEV and the LOB family corpora, it is shown that, although -ingly adjuncts in general became common in the Early Modern English period, the specific verb-based, oriented typed investigated here increased dramatically in fiction writing in the first half of the 19th century and has remained relatively constant since then. Finally, the rise of -ingly adjuncts is related to Swan’s adverbialization process.

Speaker stance and evaluative -ly adverbs in the Modern English period

“…Existing adverbs are recruited into the construction and new ones are coined, and in both cases analogy looks like a key mechanism. In the twentieth century the productivity appears to decline a little, but remains high, for instance with a range ofingly adverbs being coined (Killie 1998;Broccias 2012) This expansion has involved very many of the existing adverbial forms, as is the case for curiously.…”

“…(2005:12)) or of underspecification. It might also be argued that there is a mismatch between the syntax and the interpretation, along the lines suggested by Broccias (2012) for those 'oriented' VPadverbs which formally appear to modify the VP but functionally predicate a quality of one participant in the clause. In (2b) there might be a mismatch between the apparent scope over inarticulate and the most plausible reading, that the speaker views as strange the fact that 'N was inarticulate'.…”

“…In addition to the types of adverb seen so far, Late Modern English saw the rise of a group of adverbs that sprang up as vehicles of speaker stance, analogically, rather than developing slowly out of VPAdvs. These include adverbs such as thankfully and hopefully as well as a set of -ingly adverbs like interestingly or frustratingly (Broccias 2012). SAdvs and AdjAdvs have become productive sites for the expression of speaker stance in English.…”

Paula Rautionaho, Arja Nurmi and Juhani Klemola (eds.). Corpora and the changing society. Studies in the evolution of English (Studies in Corpus Linguistics 96). Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company, 2020. 305 pp. ISBN 9789027205438 (HB)

“…In fact, adverbs such as willingly and accordingly, which are used recurrently by many authors, seem to be fairly well-established already in EModE. Second, Harry Potter adverbs, a class of adverbs of a rather elusive nature that tend to co-occur with "verbs of saying, motion, and watching" (Broccia 2012: 151), do occur in Iyeiry's dataset already in ME and EModE, thus going against Broccia's (2012) conclusion that they are not attested until LModE. Therefore, the author convincingly argues that EModE appears to be a crucial moment in the development of -ingly adverbs, which highlights the importance of conducting more research on this period in future studies.…”