Transforming Manner Adverbs into Subject-Oriented Adverbs

31 Pages·2013·0.21 MB·English

Natural Language and Linguistic Theory manuscript No.
(will be inserted by the editor)
Transforming Manner Adverbs into Subject-Oriented
Adverbs: Evidence from Japanese
Ai Kubota
Received:date/Accepted:date
Abstract It is well known that some adverbs in English, such as stupidly,
cleverly and clumsily, can be interpreted as manner adverbs or agent-oriented
adverbs depending on their positions in a sentence, e.g., John danced stupidly
vs. Stupidly, John danced. Three approaches are possible and have been pro-
posed for this alternation: (i) positing an agent-oriented adverb as the basic
entryfromwhichamanneradverbisderived(Ernst2002),(ii)positingaman-
ner adverb as the basic entry from which an agent-oriented adverb is derived
(McConnell-Ginet 1982), and (iii) positing two distinct lexical entries for the
two readings (Pin˜´on 2010). I present data from Japanese which support the
second approach. However, there would be a problem if we directly adopt the
second approach for the Japanese data, since the adverbs that at first sight
look like agent-oriented adverbs in Japanese are not truly ‘agent’-oriented,
but rather ‘surface-subject’-oriented. I propose an analysis that does not suf-
fer from this problem, by modifying an idea from McConnell-Ginet 1982 and
also incorporating the notion of comparison class from Ernst 2002. The dis-
cussion extends to another class of adverbs called ‘evaluative adverbs’, such
as fortunately and oddly, which show the same morphological property with
surface-subject oriented adverbs in Japanese.
Keywords Manner adverb · Agent-oriented adverb · Subject-oriented
adverb · Evaluative adverb · Japanese · Comparison class · Passive sensitivity
AiKubota
DepartmentofLinguisticsandGermanic,Slavic,AsianandAfricanLanguages
MichiganStateUniversity
B-331WellsHall
EastLansing,MI48824-1027
Tel.:[phone]
Fax:[phone]
E-mail:[email protected]
2 AiKubota
1 Introduction
Jackendoff (1972) notes that “the category ‘adverb’ has traditionally been a
catch-all term” (p. 47). That being the case, the classification of adverbs is
not at all a simple task. Furthermore, whether a particular classification orig-
inally developed for some language is adequate for other languages as well is
another question. This paper sheds light on one such case, where a certain
category of adverbs established in one language (English) has a seemingly
equivalent class in another language (Japanese), but where the two categories
in the two languages turn out to have some different property. More specifi-
cally, I focus in this paper on a class of adverbs called agent-oriented adverbs
in English, such as stupidly, cleverly and clumsily, and the corresponding ad-
verbsinJapanese,suchasorokani-mo ‘stupidly’,kashikoku-mo ‘cleverly’,and
bukiyooni-mo ‘clumsily’. Of particular interest is the meaning alternation be-
tween the so-called ‘manner’ and ‘clausal’ readings that is observed in both
EnglishandJapanese.Henceforth,Iwillrefertothisphenomenonasthe‘man-
ner/clausal alternation’.
It has been observed that in English a class of adverbs such as stupidly,
cleverly and clumsily have more than one interpretation when they appear in
the auxiliary position as in (1-a), whereas the meaning is unambiguous when
they appear in the sentence-initial position (1-b) or the final position (1-c)
(Jackendoff 1972).1
(1) a. John stupidly danced. (Ambiguous)
(i) ‘The manner in which John danced was stupid.’
(ii) ‘It was stupid of John to have danced.’
b. Stupidly, John danced. (Unambiguous)
‘It was stupid of John to have danced.’
c. John danced stupidly. (Unambiguous)
‘The manner in which John danced was stupid.’
While adverbs in the auxiliary position allow both the manner interpre-
tation (‘the manner in which ...’) and the ‘clausal’, or the ‘sentential’, in-
terpretation (‘it was stupid of John to ...’), adverbs in the sentence-initial
position can only be construed in the clausal interpretation, and adverbs in
thesentence-finalpositioncanonlybeconstruedinthemannerinterpretation.
There are some general questions regarding this phenomenon. First of all,
are adverbs of this kind lexically ambiguous? If not, how are the two in-
terpretations derived from a single lexical source? Either way, what is the
1 Wyner (2008: 255) notes that adverbs can be interpreted as manner adverbs even in
the sentence initial position, when “the overall sentence implies a contrast; that is, we use
[(i)] to deny some previous assertion” (for example, in a context where the speaker wants
todenythestatement“BillkissedJillreluctantly”).
(i) Passionately,BillkissedJill.
Inthispaper,Idonotconsidercasesthatinvolvethisadditionalfocuseffect.
TransformingMannerAdverbsintoSubject-OrientedAdverbs 3
lexical/semantic relation between the two interpretations? Furthermore, how
commonisthislexicalrelationcross-linguistically?Inthispaper,Itakealook
at this kind of manner/clausal alternation in Japanese, in which there is a
morphologicaldistinctionbetweenmanneradverbsandclausaladverbsunlike
inEnglish,andproposeacompositionalsemanticanalysisofthetworeadings.
As shown above, in English, it is the position of the adverb that disam-
biguates the interpretation. In Japanese, the two readings are instead dis-
ambiguated morphologically. As Sawada (1978) notes, orokani ‘stupidly’ only
has the manner reading, whereas orokani-mo in (3) with the particle mo only
has the clausal reading, both regardless of the position in the sentence.2 This
means that there is no ambiguity of the kind found in the English example
(1-a).
(2) a. John-wa orokani odotta.
John-top stupidly danced.
‘John danced stupidly.’ (Unambiguous; Manner only)
b. Orokani John-wa odotta.
stupidly John-top danced.
‘John danced stupidly.’ (Unambiguous; Manner only)
(3) a. John-wa orokani-mo odotta.
John-top stupidly danced.
‘Stupidly, John danced.’ (Unambiguous; Clausal only)
b. Orokani-mo John-wa odotta.
stupidly John-top danced.
‘Stupidly, John danced.’ (Unambiguous; Clausal only)
Morphologicallyspeaking,itseemsasiftheparticlemo transformsaman-
ner adverb into the corresponding clausal adverb.
(4) manner adverb + mo → clausal adverb
According to Sawada (1978), this particle, as far as this phenomenon is con-
cerned,isakindofinterjectionalparticlewhichhasafunctionthatmarksthe
speaker’s subjective attitude toward the proposition.3
2 InJapanese,thepositionofadverbswithinasentenceisquitefreeaslongastheyprecede
the verb. Focusing (by adding phonological prominence, for example) does not affect the
interpretationoftheadverbasfarasthemanner/clausalalternationisconcerned.
3 The interjectional use of mo is often called eetan no mo ‘exclamatory mo’ such as in
(i).
(i) Kono-ko-mo zuibunookiku-nattanaa.
This-child-mo a.lot big-became excl
‘Thischildhasbecomesobig!’
Mo isfoundinotheruses,e.g.asanadditiveparticleand(apartof)NPIsasshownbelow.
(ii) a. John-mo kita.
John-mo came.
‘Johnalsocame(inadditiontosomeoneelse).’
4 AiKubota
This mo-alternation occurs systematically with adverbs such as kashikoku
(-mo) ‘cleverly’, daitanni(-mo) ‘boldly’, namaikini(-mo) ‘impertinently’, tee-
neeni(-mo) ‘carefully; politely’, shinsetsuni(-mo) ‘kindly’, busahooni(-mo)
‘rudely’,andsoon.However,thismorphologicalalternationisfoundonlywith
adverbs that have adjectival stems. Thus, for example, the manner adverb
kichinto ‘neatly; decently; properly’, which does not have an adjectival coun-
terpart,doesnothavethemanner/clausalalternation(*kichinto-mo),thusno
clausal use, even though there is nothing semantically anomalous about the
would-be clausal meaning of this adverb (e.g., ‘Neatly, they gave us an extra
pillow and towel.’).
As far as the Japanese data are concerned, it seems natural to hypoth-
esize that, for adverbs that display the manner/clausal alternation, clausal
adverbs (which are morphologically more complex) are derived from manner
adverbs. However, in the previous literature on this alternation (in English),
it is still controversial whether the clausal meaning and the manner meaning
sharethesamelexicalsource.Forexample,whileMcConnell-Ginet(1982)pro-
poses to derive clausal adverbs from manner adverbs, other authors such as
Ernst (2002), Rawlins (2008), Geuder (2002) pursue an opposite approach in
whichmanneradverbsarederivedfromclausaladverbs.Thereisstillonemore
possibility, that is, to say that these adverbs are lexically ambiguous, which is
a position taken by Wyner (2008), and possibly Pin˜´on (2010) too. However,
this last approach, if it is simply assumed that the manner adverb stupidly
and the clausal adverb stupidly each have distinct and unrelated lexical en-
tries, seems to lose the insight that these two kinds of adverbs are somehow
related and that this relation is not accidental but systematic and observable
across languages.
In the following section, I review the previous studies just mentioned and
point out problems and difficulties that they face in analyzing especially the
Japanese data just introduced. Then in section 3, I propose my analysis of
manner/clausal alternating adverbs, building on ideas from Ernst (2002) and
McConnell-Ginet (1982). In section 4, I discuss passive sensitivity, a phe-
nomenon in which passive sentences with an adverb of a certain class have
more than one interpretation, even though the corresponding active sentences
with the same adverb have only one interpretation. The passive sensitivity
data discussed in this section will make clear why I adopt the terminology
‘surface-subject-oriented adverb’ (instead of the more familiar ‘agent-oriented
adverb’) for Japanese in this paper (see below). In section 5, I briefly discuss
a class of adverbs often called evaluative adverbs, which also undergo the mo
attachment in Japanese. Section 6 summarizes and concludes the paper.
b. Dare-mo ko-nakatta.
Who-mo come-neg.pst
‘Noonecame.’
Idonotknowwhetheritispossibletohaveaunifiedanalysisthatcoversalltheinstances
ofmo.
TransformingMannerAdverbsintoSubject-OrientedAdverbs 5
Before moving on to the next section, let me clarify the terminology and
the classification of adverbs that I assume throughout this paper. As for the
English adverbs, I adopt the classification used in Ernst 2002. As for the
Japanese adverbs, I suggest a slightly different terminology in order to reflect
thebehavioraldifferencebetweenadverbsinJapaneseandadverbsinEnglish.
According to Ernst (2002), the adverb stupidly in its clausal sense as in
(1-b) belongs to the class of adverbs called agent-oriented adverbs, which is a
subclass of subject-oriented adverbs as in (5). The adverb stupidly as in (1-c)
belongs to a different class of adverbs, i.e., manner adverbs. 4
(5) Subject-oriented adverbs (Ernst 2002)
a. Agent-oriented adverbs: cleverly, stupidly, wisely, tactfully, fool-
ishly, rudely, secretly, ostentatiously, intelligently
b. Mental attitude adverbs: reluctantly, calmly, willingly, anxiously,
eagerly, frantically, absent-mindedly, gladly, sadly
Subject-oriented adverbs are those that “express some additional information
about the subject” (Jackendoff 1972: 57), as the paraphrase in (6-b) shows.5
(6) a. {Cleverly/Reluctantly}, John spilled the beans.
b. John was {clever/reluctant} to spill the beans.
Among subject-oriented adverbs, what Ernst calls agent-oriented adverbs are
those that “indicate that an event is such as to judge its agent as ADJ with
respect to the event” (Ernst 2002: 54), whereas what he calls mental atti-
tude adverbs are those that “describe, most fundamentally, a state of mind
experienced by the referent of the subject of the verb” (ibid.: 63). In what
follows, I mainly use stupidly and reluctantly as representative examples of
agent-oriented adverbs and mental attitude adverbs respectively.
In addition to subject-oriented adverbs, there is another class of adverbs,
whichiscalledspeaker-orientedadverbs,followingJackendoff(1972)andErnst
(2002). Speaker-oriented adverbs can also be considered as a kind of clausal
adverbs, as they modify clausal elements rather than verb phrases. Among
speaker-orientedadverbs,therearethreesubclasses:speech-act(honestly,frankly,
roughly, etc.), epistemic (perhaps, probably, maybe, etc.), and evaluative (un-
believably, unfortunately, luckily, strangely, etc.). Examples are from Ernst
(2002: 69).
(7) a. Honestly, who would do such a thing? (Speech-act adverb)
4 Agent-oriented adverbs are also called “thematically dependent adverbs (TDAs)”
(Wyner1998)and“Ad-VPs”(McConnell-Ginet1982).
5 As pointed out by one of the reviewers, the paraphrase in (i-b) is not appropriate for
someoftheadverbslistedin(5),e.g.,*Johnwas{secret/calm}tospillthebeans.Sincethe
adverbs secretly and calmly does not appear in Jackendoff’s (1972) list of subject-oriented
adverbs,itiseitherthecasethattheparaphrase‘SUBJwasADJto...’isnotadequatefor
subject-orientedadverbsortheadverbssecretlyandcalmlyarenotsupposedtobeclassified
assubject-orientedadverbs.Seealsofootnote7.
6 AiKubota
b. The markets will perhaps respond to lower interest rates. (Epis-
temic adverb)
c. Unbelievably, she decided to buy a camel. (Evaluative adverb)
IbrieflydiscussevaluativeadverbsinJapaneseinsection5toexaminewhether
my proposal about mo is on the right track, since evaluative adverbs are
another class of adverbs in Japanese that allow the mo-attachment just like
orokani-mo ‘stupidly’.
As for the adverbs in Japanese, I adopt a different terminology. Specifi-
cally, I will not call the class of adverbs that includes orokani-mo ‘stupidly
(clausal)’ ‘agent-oriented’ adverbs. Instead I will call them ‘surface-subject-
oriented adverbs’ (SS-oriented adverbs), since these adverbs in Japanese are
notstrictly‘agent’-oriented(section3andsection4.2),anditismisleadingto
call them so. As shown in the next section, previous analyses that are based
on observations about agent-oriented adverbs in English cannot be directly
adopted to account for the nature of SS-oriented adverbs in Japanese.
2 Previous Studies on the Manner/Clausal Alternation
Therearemainlythreepossibleapproachestothemanner/clausalalternation.
Thefirstapproachistopositaclausaladverbasthebasicandderiveamanner
adverb form it. The second approach is to posit a manner adverb as the basic
and derive a clausal adverb from it. The third approach is to give up deriving
onefromtheotherandsimplyposittwoversionsforeachadverbthatexhibits
themanner/clausalalternation.Inthefollowingsubsections,Iwillfirstreview
Ernst 2002, which takes the first approach, and then McConnell-Ginet 1982,
which takes the second approach, followed by Pin˜´on 2010, which, as far as I
can tell, goes for the third view.
2.1 Ernst 2002
According to Ernst (2002), the manner and clausal readings of each adverb
are closely related to each other in such a way that manner readings are verb-
modifying versions of adverbs whose lexical entries are the clause-modifying
adverbsthatyieldagent-orientedreadings.Healsopointsouttwomajorways
in which the two readings differ. The first is that manner readings “describe
some sort of external manifestation that may or may not reflect the internal
reality” ?? 56]ernst2002. For example, the sentences in (8) ((2.43) in Ernst
2002), show that the post-verbal manner adverbs ‘manifest’ (or ‘show proper-
ties typical of’) stupidity and cleverness without Alice the spy actually being
stupid or clever at the moment.
(8) a. Alice cleverly answered stupidly in order to keep her identity se-
cret.
b. Alicestupidlyansweredcleverlyandgavehersecretidentityaway.
TransformingMannerAdverbsintoSubject-OrientedAdverbs 7
The second difference he points out – the observation which I take to be
critical and which will be crucial in my analysis too – is that manner readings
and agent-oriented readings differ in terms of the comparison class for events.
Take a pair of examples in (9) ((2.44) in Ernst 2002). In (9-a), “she is judged
rude because of the event of her leaving, as opposed to other things she could
have done, most especially not leaving”, whereas in (9-b), “she is judged rude
on the basis of something about her leaving – some property of her leaving
that we sometimes call a manner, which distinguishes this leaving event from
otherpossibleleavingevents.Forexample,shemighthaveleftwithoutsaying
good-bye,byslammingthedoor,orwithafewchoiceimprecationsonherway
out” ?? 57]ernst2002.
(9) a. Rudely, she left.
b. She left rudely.
This means that, for agent-oriented readings the comparison class consists of
various possible things that the subject could have done, whereas for man-
ner readings, the comparison class is a set of more specific kinds of events
(e.g., leaving events in the above example). As Ernst (2002) notes, the no-
tionofcomparisonclassisnecessaryanywayfortheinterpretationofgradable
predicates in general such as tall, hot, cute, and so on. Since adverbs such as
stupidly, cleverly, and so on, are indeed gradable (as we can form a question
that specifically asks the degree, e.g., How stupidly did he dance?), compari-
sonclassesundoubtedlyplayaroleintheinterpretationsoftheseadverbstoo.
Therefore, it is desirable to adopt the notion of comparison class, which is an
independently motivated notion, if comparison class is the key to distinguish
the two meanings.
As for the semantic representations of manner and agent-oriented adverbs
and how they are related to each other, Ernst (2002) takes the agent-oriented
versionin(10-a)asbasic(thelexicalentryfortheadverbrudely),andproposes
anoperationcalledtheMannerRulewhichconvertsanagent-orientedadverb
into the corresponding manner adverb (10-b).6
(10) a. The event e warrants positing more rudeness in Agent than the
norm for events. 7
b. The event e manifests more rudeness in Agent than the norm for
Specified Events.8
Although I agree that the notion of comparison class plays a crucial role
for gradable adverbs, there are remaining questions for this approach both
theoretically and empirically. First, from a theoretical point of view, there
is room for discussion on the adequacy of the Manner Rule. For example,
6 ForthepreciseimplementationoftheMannerRule,seeChapter2inErnst2002.
7 If Ernst’s (2002) analysis is correct, secretly cannot really be an example of agent-
oriented adverbs, since the expression ‘the event e warrants positing more secret in Agent
thanthenormforevents’isnotstraightforwardlyinterpretable(seealsofootnote5).
8 ‘SpecifiedEvents’in(10-b)isdeterminedbytheverbphrasethattheadverbmodifies.
8 AiKubota
at what point of derivation does this rule apply? Is there any restriction for
the application of this rule? Is this a language-specific rule? How does the
Manner Rule fit in a framework of compositional semantics? Furthermore,
there is an empirical difficulty especially when we turn to the manner/clausal
alternation in Japanese. Note that in Japanese it is manner adverbs that are
morphologically simplex.9
mo-attachment
−−−−−−−−−→
manner adverb SS-oriented adverb
(11)
orokani ‘stupidly’ orokani-mo ‘stupidly’
←−−−−−−−−−−−−−
Ernst’sMannerRule
If we directly adopt Ernst’s (2002) approach (i.e., if we take agent-oriented
adverbs to be basic and adopted the Manner Rule), then we would have to
assume that mo’s function is to cancel the application of the Manner Rule
(since the mo-less version is unambiguously a manner adverb). Alternatively,
we might assume that the lexical item orokani (with an underlying agent-
oriented meaning) is never interpretable without the obligatory application of
theMannerRule,orwiththeattachmentofasemanticallyvacuousmorpheme
mo.Butitseemshighlyunlikelythatalexicalitemthatisneverinterpretable
without an obligatory application of an additional lexical operation like the
Manner Rule (which itself is already a highly unnatural situation) becomes
suddenlyinterpretableinthepresenceofanovertbutmeaninglessmorpheme.
Thus,asfarastheJapanesedataisconcerned,Isuggesttotaketheotherway,
thatis,compositionallyderivingtheclausalreadingviathecombinationofthe
manner adverb and mo. Although I depart from Ernst’s (2002) approach in
thisrespect,Iadopthisideaofcapturingthedifferencebetweenagent-oriented
and manner readings via the notion of comparison class.
2.2 McConnell-Ginet (1982)
According to McConnell-Ginet (1982), adverbs are always construed directly
with a verb.10 In the case of manner adverbs as in (12), the adverb rudely is
construedwiththeverbdeparted,andaddssomemeaningtotheverb.Onthe
other hand, agent-oriented adverbs in (13) are not syntactically sisters to the
verb departed but to the higher abstract verb acted.
(12) a. Surface structure: Louisa departed rudely.
9 This pattern in which the manner adverb is morphologically simpler does not seem
to be limited to Japanese, as it is also attested in other languages such as German (e.g.,
klugerweise ‘cleverly’,whichconsistsofklug ‘clever’andweise,canonlybeinterpretedasa
agent-orientedadverb).TheMannerRulewouldbemoreconvincingifthereisasignificant
number of languages in which the morphological relation between the two adverbs is the
oppositeof(11).Idonotknowofanysuchlanguage.
10 Tobemoreprecise,adverbsareactuallyconsideredasanargumentoftheverbandnot
reallyamodifier.
TransformingMannerAdverbsintoSubject-OrientedAdverbs 9
b. LF: Louisa [ departed rudely ]
(13) a. Surfacestructure:Louisarudelydeparted.(rudely withanagent-
oriented meaning)
b. LF: Louisa [ acted rudely to depart ]
In this approach, the interpretation of an adverb depends on which verb the
adverb is construed with, either the main verb depart or the higher, abstract
verb act. The manner adverb meaning is considered as semantically basic,
and the agent-oriented reading is obtained by positing a different syntactic
structure (which receives a different semantic interpretation).
ThisideaseemstobeplausibleespeciallyfortheJapanesemanner/clausal
alternation, since it allows us to analyze the manner adverb orokani as the
basic form. If this essentially syntactic analysis of the alternation is on the
righttrack,thenwemighttakeittomeanthatmo isamorphemethatsignals
that the adverb is located somewhere higher in the structure. In this way, we
would not have to rely on a special operation like the Manner Rule.
However,thisapproachhasbeencriticizedintheliterature,especiallywith
respect to the adequacy of a higher verb like act. For example, Geuder (2002)
points out that a sentence like John departed cannot be paraphrased as John
acted to depart. He also raises a question with respect to the contrast be-
tweenshe acted rudely andshe rudely acted.Inordertocapturethedifference
between the two, the latter has to be analyzed as she acted rudely to act.
However, as Geuder (2002) points out, it is not clear what act to act means.
2.3 Pin˜´on (2010)
With Geuder’s (2002) criticism in mind, Pin˜´on (2010) argues that there is a
higherverbdecide insteadofact.Furthermore,hearguesthatthishigherverb
decide does not exist by itself somewhere in the structure but is introduced
by the agent-oriented adverb. That is, the meaning of decide is part of the
meaningofagent-orientedadverbs.Thus,therearetwodifferentlexicalentries
for stupidly, one for the manner reading (14-a) and the other for the agent-
oriented reading (14-b).11
(14) a. Manner: stupidlym = λV λe.V(e)∧stupid(e)
v,t
b. Agent-Or(cid:74)iented: stu(cid:75)pidlya =
(cid:74)(cid:20)decide(e(cid:75)(cid:48)(cid:48),x,[λe(cid:48).W(e(cid:48),x)])∧ (cid:21)
λW λxλe.∃e(cid:48)(cid:48)
(cid:104)e,vt(cid:105) CAUSE(e(cid:48)(cid:48),e)∧W(e,x)∧stupid(e(cid:48)(cid:48))
In short, what is described as stupid in (14-a) is the event of V, where V is
denoted by the verb that the adverb modifies. In (14-b), on the other hand,
what is described as stupid is not the event of V but the event of x’s deciding
11 In the original proposal, the clausal argument of ‘decide’ is intensionalized. I have re-
produced a simplified entry in (14) since this aspect of the analysis does not affect our
discussionbelow.
10 AiKubota
to do W, where W is denoted by the verb. In other words, stupidly, John
danced means that the event of John’s deciding to dance was stupid but does
not necessarily mean that the event of John’s dancing was.
Setting aside how precisely the above denotations work compositionally
and assuming that these two versions of stupidly derive manner and agent-
oriented meanings respectively, we are now back to our original puzzle: how
aremannerreadingsandagent-orientedreadingsrelatedtoeachother?Should
we give up deriving one of the two readings from the other and go for lexical
ambiguity? Of course, it is not impossible to derive one from the other, for
example,viathefollowingoperationthatconvertsmanneradverbsintoagent-
oriented ones.
(cid:20) (cid:20)CAUSE(e(cid:48)(cid:48),e)∧W(e,x)∧ (cid:21)(cid:21)
(15) λS λW λx λe .∃e(cid:48)(cid:48) ( stupidlym )
vt,vt e,vt e v S(e(cid:48)(cid:48),λe.decide(e,x,[λe(cid:48).W(e(cid:48),x)])))
(cid:74) (cid:75)
(cid:20)CAUSE(e(cid:48)(cid:48),e)∧W(e,x)∧ (cid:21)
=λWλxλe.∃e(cid:48)(cid:48)
stupidlym (e(cid:48)(cid:48),λe.decide(e,x,[λe(cid:48).W(e(cid:48),x)])))
(cid:20)(cid:74)CAUSE(e(cid:48)(cid:75)(cid:48),e)∧W(e,x)∧ (cid:21)
= λWλxλe.∃e(cid:48)(cid:48)
decide(e(cid:48)(cid:48),x,[λe(cid:48).W(e(cid:48),x)])∧stupid(e(cid:48)(cid:48))
= stupidlya
(cid:74) (cid:75)
However, it is unclear what this operation is and how common it is. Clearly,
thisisnotasimpletype-shiftingoperation,butsomethingthatintroducesthe
higher verb decide and a causal relation between the two events (x’s decision
of doing W and x’s doing W). It remains unclear how general this kind of
operation is cross-categorically, within a language, and across languages.
Moreover, there is another concern regarding the higher verb decide. That
is, whenever there is an agent-oriented adverb, the sentence is always pre-
dicted to mean that the subject decided to do the action. What, then, about
a sentence like (16), where John didn’t decide to die/fall?:
(16) John-wa orokani-mo {shinda/koronda}.
John-top stupidly-mo {died/fell}
‘Stupidly, John died/fell.’
The prediction is that the agent-oriented adverb orikani-mo introduces the
higherverbdecide andthusthesentencemeansthatthesubjectdecidedtodie.
However,thesentencedoesnotnecessarilymeanthatJohncommittedsuicide.
It simply means that it was stupid of him to have died, either voluntarily or
by doing something (perhaps inadvertently) that eventually led him to die
against his will. I will come back to this example at the end of section 3.
The fundamental problem of this approach lies in the assumption that
agent-oriented adverbs introduce a higher verb decide as part of their mean-
ings.Notonlyisitproblematicforaccountingfordatalike(16)butitalsoloses
McConnell-Ginet’s(1982)insightthatadverbslikestupidly arefundamentally
manneradverbs(orAd-Verbsinherterm)andthattheagent-orientedreading
is sololy derivable from a structural difference.