Sentence adverbials in a functional description

105 Pages·1986·7.85 MB·English

by  Eva Koktová

SENTENCE ADVERBIALS IN A FUNCTIONAL DESCRIPTION
Pragmatics & Beyond
An Interdisciplinary Series of Language Studies
Editors:
Herman Parret
(Belgian National Science Foundation,
Universities of Louvain and Antwerp)
Jef Verschueren
(Belgian National Science Foundation,
University of Antwerp)
Editorial Address:
Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures
University of Antwerp (UIA)
Universiteitsplein 1
B-2610 Wilrijk
Belgium
Editorial Board:
Norbert Dittmar (Free University of Berlin)
David Holdcroft (University of Leeds)
Jacob Mey (Odense University)
Jerrold M. Sadock (University of Chicago)
Emanuel A. Schegloff (University of California at Los Angeles)
Daniel Vanderveken (University of Quebec at Trois-Rivières)
Teun A. van Dijk (University of Amsterdam)
VII:2
Eva Koktova
Sentence Adverbials in a Functional Description
SENTENCE ADVERBIALS
IN A
FUNCTIONAL DESCRIPTION
Eva Koktova
University of Hamburg
JOHN BENJAMINS PUBLISHING COMPANY
AMSTERDAM/PHILADELPHIA
1986
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Koktova, Eva.
Sentence adverbials in a functional description.
(Pragmatics & beyond, ISSN 0166-6258; VII:2)
Bibliography: p.
1. Grammar, Comparative and general -- Adverbials. 2. Generative grammar. 3. Gram­
mar, comparative and general ~ Syntax. 4. Semantics. I. Title. II. Series.
P284.K65 1986 415 86-26354
ISBN 90 272 2552 4 (European) / ISBN 1-556-19001-8 (US) (alk. paper)
© Copyright 1986 - John Benjamins B.V.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, by print, photoprint, microfilm, or
any other means, without written permission from the publisher.
To my parents

TABLE OF CONTENTS
0. INTRODUCTION 1
1. THE THEORETICAL BACKGROUND 7
1.1. Comments on previous approaches 7
1.2. Functional generative description 17
2. THE PRIMARY CASE OF THE UNDERLYING OCCUR­
RENCE OF CA EXPRESSIONS 23
2.1. The paradigm of the primary case 23
2.2. Gereralizing about CA 26
2.3. Groups of CA expressions 28
3. SECONDARY CASES OF THE UNDERLYING OCCUR­
RENCE OF CA EXPRESSIONS 29
3.1. Multiple occurrence of CA expressions on the hierarchical
scope interpretation 29
3.2. Multiple occurrence of CA expressions on the intracluster
scope interpretation 31
3.3. Occurrence of CA expressions in wh-questions 32
3.4. CA expressions with underlying backward scope 33
3.5. Occurrence of CA expressions in the topic of a sentence 35
3.6. Occurrence of CA expressions in embedded structures 36
3.7. Coordination and apposition of CA expressions 38
3.8. CA expressions in parenthetical chunks of sentences 40
4. SURFACE PROPERTIES OF CA EXPRESSIONS 43
4.1. Scope-unambiguous positions 43
4.2. Scope-ambiguous positions 44
4.3. Illustration 51
5. FORMATION OF CA EXPRESSIONS 55
5.1. Morphological formation 55
5.2. Syntactic formation 56
5.3. Deep word-order based formation 56
5.4. Formation by lexicalization of collocations 57
viii TABLE OF CONTENTS
6. LEXICAL PROPERTIES OF CA EXPRESSIONS 59
6.1. Salva veritate paraphrasing and lexical relations of CA
expressions 60
6.2. Salva veritate omissibility of CA expressions 63
6.3. Pronominalization and deletion of CA expressions 65
6.4. Distribution of CA expressions 66
6.5. Scoping relations of CA expressions 70
6.6. Listing CA expressions 75
7. CONCLUSION 83
FOOTNOTES 85
REFERENCES 91
0. INTRODUCTION
In he present work we argue, within the framework of a functional
generative description, for an alternative proposal concerning a joint syntac-,
tico-semantic treatment of certain adverbial expressions (including adverbs
as well as prepositional phrases) which have been hitherto referred to under
different headings but often considered as exhibiting similar properties (i.e.
as belonging to overlapping or hierarchically organized classes), such as the
expressions in (1) (throughout this work, the occurrences of the expressions
in question will be printed in italics).
(1) frankly, shortly, surprisingly, to my surprise, certainly, presuma­
bly, probably, alternatively, firstly, especially, only, also, at least,
not, for example, inter alia, either-or.
The expressions in question have been hitherto subcategorized accord­
ing to their lexical semantics — either intuitively (cf. Greenbaum 1969, Quirk
et al. 1972), or according to their logical representation (cf. Bartsch 1972,
Bellert 1977). Essentially two classes (types) of these expressions have been
distinguished:
(i) The class of expressions which essentially exhibit full-fledged lexical
semantics, being linguistically paraphrasable by higher predicates and logi­
cally representable by means of predicates (cf. Bellert 1977) or by means of
operators (cf. Bartsch 1972, Lakoff 1973a, Lang 1979). Their semantics has
been viewed as related essentially to the whole sentence (hence, sentence
adverbials — the core of this class can be exemplified by such expressions as
frankly, shortly, surprisingly, certainly, presumably, probably).
(ii) The class of expressions which essentially do not exhibit full-fledged
lexical semantics, not being paraphrasable by higher predicates and logically
representable by means of operators. Their semantics has been viewed as
related'essentially to a part of the sentence (hence, focussing adverbials —
the core of this class can be exemplified by such expressions as only, also, at
least, not).
The expressions of these two classes have been referred to under various