Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Adverbs

« Adverbs Adverbs are so named from their role in modifying verbs and other non-nominal expressions.

For example, in ‘John ran slowly', the adverb ‘slowly' modifies ‘ran' by characterizing the manner of John's running.

The debate on the semantic contribution of adverbs centres on two approaches.

On the first approach, adverbs are understood as predicate operators: for example, in ‘John ran slowly', ‘ran' would be taken to be a predicate and ‘slowly' an operator affecting its meaning.

Working this out in detail requires the resources of higher-order logic. On the second approach, adverbs are understood as predicates of ‘objects' such as events and states, reference to which is revealed in logical form.

For example, ‘John ran slowly' would be construed along the lines of ‘there was a running by John and it was slow', in which the adverb ‘slowly' has become a predicate ‘slow' applied to the event that was John's running.

Since adverbs are exclusively modifiers, they are classed among the syncategorematic words of terminist logic, the investigation of which carried the subject forward from Aristotle in the thirteenth century.

(The contrasting ‘categoremata' - grammatical subjects and predicates - are those words which have meaning independently.) They are of contemporary interest for philosophical logic and semantic theory, because particular accounts of them carry implications for the nature of combinatorial semantics and language understanding, and for ontology.

1 Syntactic types and semantic combination There are several types of adverbial constructions, of which we distinguish the following classes: (a) ‘manner' adverbs, which intuitively function as simple modifiers of verbs; (b) ‘thematic' adverbs, of which some and possibly all function as (at least) two-place predicates in their own right; (c) adverbs of quantification, which express generality applying to whole sentences; and (d) discourse particles, whose meaning evidently derives from their role in linking clauses or independent sentences.

(These categories are not exhaustive.) ‘Adverbs', especially manner ‘adverbs', are not in fact confined to single words.

The general category is therefore not that of adverbs, but of adverbial phrases or adverbials (for example, ‘more quickly than Mary', ‘very frequently').

Typical manner adverbials are as in (1) below, thematic adverbs as in (2) and adverbs of quantification as in (3): (1) John walked slowly/quietly/more quickly than Mary.

(2) Mary apparently/reluctantly went to New York.

(3) Mary occasionally/always walks to work.

Discourse particles, considered briefly below, include ‘but', ‘anyway' and several others.

We discuss these cases in turn.

The essential logical problem of manner adverbials is already apparent in the simplest examples.

A verb combines with a manner adverb to form a complex verbal construction of the same type.

Thus ‘walk' and ‘walk slowly' are both predicates, and the syntax of the combination may be depicted as follows: [V [V walk][Adv slowly]] If (disregarding tense) we take ‘walk' as a one-place predicate, then the semantics of this combination might be given by positing that ‘slowly' is interpreted as a predicate operator; that is, as a function that maps one-place predicate interpretations onto other one-place predicate interpretations.

Alternatively, it may be suggested that ‘slowly' and the other manner adverbials are, logically speaking, predicates in their own right, specifically predicates of actions. The adjectives to which they are related do seem to play this role.

Corresponding to (1), for instance, we have the adjectival predications (4) John's walk was slow/quiet/quicker than Mary's.

If we take the further step of supposing that the verb ‘walk' is in fact a two-place predicate, with a position for actions, then the combination ‘walk slowly' can be interpreted as walk(x, e) & slow(e), where e ranges over actions.

Comparing this account with the first alternative, (slowly(walk))(x), we see a trade-off: where predicates are taken to have a simple structure, the adverbial must be understood as an operator; but where extra structure, in the form of a place for actions, is posited, the semantic combination is truth-functional and predicate operators are not required.

The alternatives just sketched each have their defenders in the literature on adverbials.

Adverbs are construed as predicate operators in formal theories of linguistic structure, including those of Montague (1974) and Lewis (1975).

The predicative alternative was first advanced at length by Davidson (1967), and is elaborated by Parsons (1990).

Semantic and metaphysical issues arise for each account; we take up some of these below.

Thematic adverbs are intuitively distinguished from manner adverbs in as much as they yield constructions adverb + verb which cannot be treated simply as new verbs: apparently going to New York is not a way of going to New York; and reluctantly going to New York is not a manner of travel, but an instance of travel whose agent was reluctant to undertake it.

For the examples in (2) the following paraphrases suggest themselves: It was apparent that Mary went to New York.

Mary went to New York and she was reluctant to go to New York.

The discourse particles, traditionally and appropriately called adverbs, have come under relatively formal study only in recent years.

The following examples are representative: (5) He was poor but honest.

(6) Anyway, I'm going to New York.

They resist analysis in terms of their contribution to truth-conditions, but carry implications for the discourses in which they occur, with (5) involving some presumptive contrast with what might have been expected and (6), as an assertion, functioning to indicate a return to a superordinate topic of conversation.

See Levinson (1983) for examples and discussion.

2 Ambiguities Many adverbs are ambiguous between thematic-adverbial and manner-adverbial interpretation.

In an example such as (7) Mary quickly objected, we may have either the interpretation ‘Mary's objection was delivered in a quick manner' or the interpretation ‘Mary's objection came a short time after the enunciation of the proposition to which she objected'.

The second, thematic-adverbial interpretation shows up in the corresponding adjective ‘quick' in a construction such as Mary was quick to object.

These examples suggest that grammatical appearance belies logical structure, since the thematic adverbial in (7) functions, logically speaking, as the main predicate of that sentence.

Austin (1956) observed that adverbial position often disambiguates, with post-verb adverbs favouring the manner-interpretation, and pre-verb adverbs the thematic, as in the pair He trod on the snail clumsily.

Clumsily, he trod on the snail.

Adverbs of quantification pick up arguments including, but not restricted to, the temporal. Sentences such as (8) are ambiguous, depending upon whether the quantification is over occasions, or over the subject: (8) Travel books are seldom worth reading.

Where the adverb quantifies over time, (8) means that the occasions are few when it is worth reading travel books.

But there is another salient interpretation: Few travel books are worth reading.

Where quantification over time would be ridiculous in view of the subject matter, construal of the adverb with the subject is particularly salient, for example: Quadratic equations seldom have real solutions. The above reflections have it that thematic adverbs and adverbs of quantification are not modifiers at all, except in a purely grammatical sense.

Inversely, there have been suggestions that what appear in language as if they were. »