Adverb certainty and the formal hierarchy
- Justin Malčić, University of Cambridge
- Lecture Block 2, University of Cambridge
It has been apparent for some time that adverb distribution has much to tell us about the nature of formal hierarchy in Generative Syntax (Cinque 1999 et seq.). This paper investigates the observation that for several types of adverbs, likeliness of appearing higher at given points in the formal hierarchy correlates with the adverb expressing a lesser degree of certainty. In particular, corpus data shows that epistemic adverbs 'maybe', 'possibly', 'probably' and 'definitely' appear with decreasing frequency as the initial surface element in the clause. This effect is particularly evident in the sentences below using 'maybe' and 'definitely':
1) Maybe John will go to the shops.
?John will maybe go to the shops.
2) John will definitely go to the shops.
*Definitely John will go to the shops.
Using a combination of corpus data and a survey eliciting grammaticality judgments, it will be shown, firstly, that both in terms of frequency and perceived grammaticality, the distributions of certain categories of adverbs extend across multiple domains, and, secondly, that the placement of individual adverbs within these domains tends to correlate with degree of certainty. It will be suggested that this may reflect the speaker-oriented/proposition-oriented distinction observed between the higher and lower parts of the formal hierarchy and also internally to that hierarchy (see i.a. Speas & Tenny 2004, Haegeman & Hill 2013, Wiltschko 2016). Notwithstanding expected synchronic variation, the data also potentially provide a way of assessing the perceived certainty of these scalar adverbs both relative to each other and in isolation.
2) John will definitely go to the shops.
*Definitely John will go to the shops.
Using a combination of corpus data and a survey eliciting grammaticality judgments, it will be shown, firstly, that both in terms of frequency and perceived grammaticality, the distributions of certain categories of adverbs extend across multiple domains, and, secondly, that the placement of individual adverbs within these domains tends to correlate with degree of certainty. It will be suggested that this may reflect the speaker-oriented/proposition-oriented distinction observed between the higher and lower parts of the formal hierarchy and also internally to that hierarchy (see i.a. Speas & Tenny 2004, Haegeman & Hill 2013, Wiltschko 2016). Notwithstanding expected synchronic variation, the data also potentially provide a way of assessing the perceived certainty of these scalar adverbs both relative to each other and in isolation.