A COGNITIVE APPROACH TO ENGLISH ADVERBS

The adverb has been understudied, compared with other grammatical cate gories such as norms and verbs. Previous accounts of English adverbs s uch as Greenbaum (1969), Jackendoff (1972), Bellert (1977), Ernst (198 4) assume that one only has to paraphrase the meanings of English adve rbs as simply and formally as possible. These semantic-paraphrase anal yses do not ask what underlies their paraphrases much less what is a p ossible English adverb. The aim of this paper is threefold: to critici ze the longstanding assumption that adverbs are too heterogeneous to b e subject to a systematic treatment,. to provide a cognitive-grammar ( Langacker 1987a, 1990, 1991) account of English adverbs; and to show t hat it contributes to constraining their range. rt will be shown that English adverbs are much less idiosyncratic and heterogeneous than the previous analyses assume, with their semantic properties and syntacti c behavior attributed to our ability to conceptualize a situation by m eans of alternate images. More specifically, adverbs will be defined a s functions that map a verb (construed through sequential scanning) in to some other mode of scanning or modal. furthermore, if will be argue d that the inventory of scanning and modal offers a natural way to con strain the range of English adverbs. All this strongly suggests that a dverbs are no less amenable to a systematic treatment than nouns, verb s, and adjectives.