On the Categorial Status of Adverbs
This paper is concerned with the question of what adverbs in English are as a category. It argues that English adverbs are not positional variants of a single category together with adjectives but also do not constitute a separate lexical category on their own, as is commonly assumed. Instead, this...
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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MDPI AG
2025-06-01
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| Series: | Languages |
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| Online Access: | https://www.mdpi.com/2226-471X/10/7/149 |
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| Summary: | This paper is concerned with the question of what adverbs in English are as a category. It argues that English adverbs are not positional variants of a single category together with adjectives but also do not constitute a separate lexical category on their own, as is commonly assumed. Instead, this paper advocates the position that adverbs can and should be assimilated with PPs and offers a comprehensive presentation of this view. In particular, it provides evidence that the morpheme <i>-ly</i> is not a suffix but a nominal root, which forms the basis of the analysis of adverbs as PPs. Furthermore, it shows that the PP analysis of adverbs is able to account for a variety of facts, including those that have been previously used as arguments for alternative analyses. Finally, this paper demonstrates that the PP analysis allows for a straightforward compositional semantics, using manner and degree adverbs as case studies, and provides an outlook into the cross-linguistic situation in the domain of adverbs from the perspective of their morphological structure. |
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| ISSN: | 2226-471X |