Position Of Adverbs Research Articles

Peculiarities of Adverb Placement in English Sentences (exemplified by the adverb "fairly")

The article deals with the problem of adverb placement in English sentences. The paper aims at studying the main tendencies and patterns which influence the choice of the syntactic position of adverbs in English. Special attention is paid to the correlation between the semantic and syntactic features of adverbs. The article also describes possible syntactic positions of adverbs belonging to different semantic classes and the factors which determine the change of the place of the adverb in the sentence. The paper also considers the peculiarities of functioning of adverbs in the sentence based on the analysis of the adverb "fairly". The material for study includes contexts of use of the adverb "fairly" taken from the British National Corpus (BNC). The research uses the following methods: descriptive and statistical methods, methods of contextual analysis and syntactic analysis. The relevance of the subject of the research is due to the fact that in modern English adverbs are characterized by a high level of variability in syntactic placement, and even adverbs belonging to the same semantic class may have different syntactic properties. The analysis showed that "fairly" can be used as an intensifying adverb, an emphasizer, an adverb of manner, an evaluation adverb; in a number of cases it can also acquire additional modal meanings or serve as a speech act-related adverb. Each meaning of the adverb is characterised by its specific variants of syntactic positioning: before the word it modifies, in medial position, in end position and as a parenthetic word detached from the rest of the sentence. The results of the research show the necessity to study the syntactic properties of adverbs in more detail and to clarify their existing dictionary definitions.

The role of linguistic factors in the retention of verbatim information in reading: An eye-tracking study on L1 and L2 German

AbstractWe investigated the retention of surface linguistic information during reading using eye-tracking. Departing from a research tradition that examines differences between meaning retention and verbatim memory, we focused on how different linguistic factors affect the retention of surface linguistic information. We examined three grammatical alternations in German that differed in involvement of changes in morpho-syntax and/or information structure, while their propositional meaning is unaffected: voice (active vs. passive), adverb positioning, different realizations of conditional clauses. Single sentences were presented and repeated, either identical or modified according to the grammatical alternation (with controlled interval between them). Results for native (N = 60) and non-native (N = 58) German participants show longer fixation durations for modified versus unmodified sentences when information structural changes are involved (voice, adverb position). In contrast, mere surface grammatical changes without a functional component (conditional clauses) did not lead to different reading behavior. Sensitivity to the manipulation was not influenced by language (L1, L2) or repetition interval. The study provides novel evidence that linguistic factors affect verbatim retention and highlights the importance of eye-tracking as a sensitive measure of implicit memory.

Contrastive analysis of English and Indonesian adverbs

This study focuses on contrastive analysis of the characteristics and features of adverbs in English and Indonesian languages. This study explores all similarities and differences of adverbs according to their forms, formations, meanings and positions in both languages thoroughly and accordingly predict what sorts of errors the Indonesian learners of English may encounter. This research uses descriptive method by using library research in which all data are collected from linguistics books from both languages. The findings show that there are similarities and differences almost in all aspects of adverbs in both languages. (1). Both languages have two similar forms, as origin and derivative. But in Indonesian, the original and derivative ones can be classified again into reduplication word. (2). The formations of adverbs in both languages use different affixation systems as inflection and derivation. Indonesian uses various affixes such as prefixes, suffixes and confixes, while English uses only kinds of affixes as prefix and suffix. In forming adverbs from adjectives, English uses a suffix ‘-ly’, and a prefix ‘a-‘, meanwhile most of the Indonesian adverbs have the same form as adjectives or without any addition of affixes. Referring to adverbs derived from verbs, Indonesian ones may be formed through reduplicating the base form of the verbs, while English does not have this system. The formation of adverbs derived from nouns, English uses some suffixes such as, -ly, -ward(s), -ways, -wise, and a prefix, a-. Meanwhile Indonesian uses only one prefix ‘se-, one suffix –nya’ and by reduplicating the base form of the noun (e.g., hati becoming hati-hati), it is not in English ones. (3). In terms of their meanings, even though both English and Indonesian are alike, a great difference appears that several words called auxiliaries verbs in English and some English verbs such as, like, want, and wish, etc. have different word classes, concept and function in both languages. Those auxiliaries’ words and verbs are basically real adverbs as qualifiers in Indonesian. (4). Referring to adverb positions, generally, Indonesian adverbs are more mobile in sentences, meanwhile, English ones have certain common positions except some words should be placed permanently. These differences of adverbs in English and Indonesian are identified as problems caused by language interference for Indonesian students. Consequently, the results of this extensive research may be useful for teachers, students, curriculum development and materials of teaching.

A comparison of L2 and L1 speakers’ production of adverb positions in the Cardiff variety of Welsh

The grammaticality of adverb positions varies by language. Consequently, L2 and L1 speakers may differ from each other in their acquisition of adverb positions. Given that L2 Welsh speakers outnumber L1 Welsh speakers in Wales, differences in acquisition may change which adverb positions occur in contemporary Welsh. This study compares which adverb positions L2 and L1 speakers produce in the spoken data from Cardiff in the CorCenCC corpus (Knight et al., 2020) in order to identify any differences in acquisition. Comparisons of L2 and L1 English speakers find that L2 speakers consistently acquire novel adverb positions yet they frequently use ungrammatical adverb positions. They also do not acquire additional constraints on adverb positions. This study largely reinforces these findings. First, L2 Welsh speakers produce every adverb position that L1 speakers produce. Secondly, although the definiteness constraint that Borsley et al. (2009: 50) describe is not productive in the sample of Cardiff Welsh speakers, L1 speakers exhibit a heaviness constraint on V-Adv-O that L2 speakers do not. Therefore, L1 transfer neither inhibits the acquisition of adverb positions nor facilitates the acquisition of additional constraints. However, unlike L2 English speakers, L2 Welsh speakers do not produce ungrammatical adverb positions. This likely derives from the lack of transferable adverb positions between Welsh and English rather than a lack of transfer. Therefore, this sample of Cardiff Welsh reinforces the crosslinguistic consistency of L2 speakers’ acquisition of adverb positions. It also suggests that L2 Welsh speakers most likely diverge from L1 speakers in the contexts in which they use adverb positions rather than the adverb positions that they use.

The acquisition of adverbs in child L3 French in Canada

This paper1 focuses on the acquisition of adverbs in French L3 and aims to identify the possible role of transfer in this particular linguistic context. The data come from children born in Canada who speak Romanian as a heritage language and are exposed to English as the societal language as well as to French (L3) in school. The variable under scrutiny is the position of adverbs in light of Cinque’s (1999) universal hierarchy. The results indicate that children have nativelike competence for adverb placement in the three languages; however, some non-convergent uses arise in French signaling possible transfer of other parametric settings from Romanian. We suggest that this is a case of non-facilitative transfer due to structural similarity between Romanian and French.

Spanish preverbal subjects and the cartography of the Spanish left periphery

In this article, after reviewing arguments for and against a preverbal dedicated subject position in Spanish, I conclude that the only asymmetry among preverbal arguments is between non-Differently Marked Objects (DMOs) and other arguments. Non DMOs cannot occupy the preverbal Focus Phrase adjacent to the verb, except for some quantified expressions. All the preverbal positions belong to the Complementizer field since the verb in Spanish always moves at least to FocP to check a [uFocus] feature. Evidence that the position to which the Spanish verb moves is Foc is given by the fact that its specifier may be occupied by indefinite nominal expressions, which are rhematic by definition, wh-words, and negative words, and by word order facts based on the syntactic position of adverbs and floating quantifiers. The Spec-of-FP acts as a subject of predication position for the focus field, and is an escape-hatch for postverbal elements, and it is argued that apart from move operations outside the clause it may serve as a step for phrases moving to the Contrastive Topic position. Elements occupying the Spec-of-FP check criterial features, and quantificational features. Finally, it is argued that in Spanish the element occupying Spec-of-FP may trigger pseudo-distributivity effects.

Adverbs in Spanish–English code-switching: Comparing verb raising and non-raising

Aims and objectives/purpose/research questions:Using generative syntactic theory regarding verb raising, predictions are made about adverb position in intra-sentential Spanish–English code-switching. Since both languages allow for non-raising, pre-verbal adverbs should be acceptably switched. However, since verb raising is only available in Spanish, post-verbal adverbs should only be allowed with a Spanish finite verb.Design/methodology/approach:Spanish–English early bilinguals ( n = 24) completed a written acceptability judgment task with a 7-point Likert-type scale. The Spanish–English code-switched sentences contained a finite verb switched with a post-verbal or pre-verbal adverb. In addition, comparison sets of monolingual equivalents were tested, targeting adverb order in Spanish and English.Data and analysis:A total of 192 judgments were included in the analysis, and z-scores of the mean ratings provided by the participants were calculated. After a descriptive analysis of the results compared language and adverb order, statistical analyses were conducted via analyses of variance (ANOVAs).Findings/conclusions:Participants showed a preference for non-raising in English, while they accepted both orders in Spanish, but only with adverbs of completion and manner. For code-switching, non-raising was always acceptable, but verb raising varied. The availability of switched non-raising directly follows from the literature. However, the language of the finite verb did not predict availability of verb raising in code-switching. The results suggest that the language of the adverb is crucial to the availability of switching, not solely the verb.Originality:The status of adverbs in code-switching has been left relatively unexplored. This study provides important details regarding adverb position both in mixed Spanish–English utterances and in monolingual contexts for this particular bilingual population.Significance/implications:These findings have a broader impact by providing data about adverb-position preferences in Spanish for a different community of speakers. In particular, it shows even more variability in the idiosyncratic behavior of different adverbs in Spanish.

The Effect of Chinese Proficiency on Determining Temporal Adverb Position by Native Japanese Speakers Learning Chinese.

The present study aimed to investigate how native Japanese speakers learning Chinese choose preferred positions for temporal adverbs depending on their level of Chinese proficiency. A naturalness judgment task conducted on native Chinese speakers showed that the most natural position for Chinese temporal adverbs was before the subject and that placement after the locative prepositional phrase was incorrect. The same task applied to native Japanese speakers found the most natural position for Japanese temporal adverbs was also before the subject. Further, when they appear at the beginning of a sentence, they provide the time for the entire sentence. Accordingly, temporal topicalization appears to influence naturalness decisions by both native Chinese and Japanese speakers. A point of difference was that in Japanese, a temporal adverb placed after a locative prepositional phrase was judged to be acceptable. When the same task was given to native Japanese speakers learning Chinese divided into three Chinese proficiency level groups, placement before the subject was the most preferred by the higher Chinese proficiency group. In addition, placement after the locative prepositional phrase was unfavored by them while the same position was frequently selected by the lower level group. As Chinese proficiency increases it appears that the preferred temporal adverb position is before the subject and the placement after the locative prepositional is judged to be unnatural. Thus, a sense of suitable temporal adverb positions in Chinese is influenced by the level of Chinese proficiency of native Japanese speakers.

Order of adjectives and adverbs in L2 English: Evidence from L1 Acholi speakers of Ugandan English

L2 Englishes are quintessentially characterized by cross-linguistic influence at all levels of linguistic analysis as a result of contact phenomena. This study examines the contribution of the syntax of a Ugandan indigenous language (Acholi) to how its L1 speakers speak English and the extent of variability observed among them, taking into account two grammatical aspects, i.e. how multiple attributive adjectives are sequenced in a noun phrase and the placement of adverbs in a sentence. The findings of the study show notable differences from L1 English (e.g. Standard British English), as L1 Acholi speakers of English do not necessarily pay attention to the prescribed L1 English order of adjectives. At the same time, the position of adverbs in a sentence also seems to be modeled, to some extent, on what takes place in Acholi syntax insofar as some legitimate L1 English structures are rejected by L1 Acholi speakers of English (as L2). Crucially, the study also reveals interspeaker variability among L1 Acholi speakers of English in Uganda based on occupation, with students being the closest to L1 English norms (as opposed to teachers and the business community), most likely due to exonormative orientation imposed on students in Ugandan schools.

Comparative analysis Case (Haal) in Arabic syntax and semantic equivalents role of grammar in Persian

Comparative analysis Case (Haal) in Arabic syntax and semantic equivalents role of grammar in Persian

Exploring the Use of Adverb ‘Literally’ in Corpus of Contemporary American English

ABSTRACTThis research aims to describe the use of adverb literally by a native speaker. It is qualitative descriptive research. The main source of this research is the data from one of the online corpora, namely Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA). There are three steps used in this research, namely the data collection, the data analysis, and the display of the analysis of the results. Based on the data from COCA, this research tries to describe the frequency of the use of adverb literally in COCA and how the adverb is used in the sentence by knowing the particle that follows it. Theories used in this research are the theory of adverb by Pichler (2016) which is supported by the theory by Murphy (1993) and the types of an adverb by Frank (1972). The result shows that the frequency of use of the word literally in COCA amounted to 39.109 contained in the range of 1990 to 2019. The adverb is mostly used in the context of spoken language which is 8.339. The collocation and the concordance lines in COCA are used to find out the particle that follows the adverb literally. The collocation in this research is divided into three classes of words, namely verbs, adjectives, and adverbs. Based on the concordance lines of adverbs in COCA, we can know that the adverb does not have the same position in the sentence. The position of adverb literally can change based on the context of the sentence.

Word Order in Job Interviews: The Malaysian Perspective

The present study was conducted to analyse the use of word order in job interviews. The data was collected from participants in an organisation in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Ten candidates of different races between the ages of 23 and 25 participated in the study. Radford’s syntactic theory of word order was employed to qualitatively analyse the data. It was found that positive sentences were predominantly used by the selected (n = 10; 47.4%) compared to the not selected (n = 10; 44.0%) and keep in view (KIV) (n = 23; 39.0%) job candidates. The findings further revealed that the types of word order used in utterances by the selected candidates were different compared to those who were not chosen for interviews. Selected candidates used more negative sentences, subordinate clauses, and time expression in sentences, whereas those who were not selected utilised adverbs of manner in negative sentences, subordinate clauses, and time expression in sentences, while the not selected candidates only used the position of adverbs. On the other hand, the KIV candidates used positive sentences, subordinate clauses and word order in questions in their utterances. The study can provide important contributions to knowledge on the use of English when developing employment course modules emphasising word order as an essential element in portraying good English language proficiency in job interviews.
 Keywords: Malaysia, fresh graduates, job interview, word order

Variation in auxiliary to T movement: evidence from adverbs

Adverb positions have been used to assess whether or not a language undergoes verb movement [e.g. Pollock, Jean-Yves. 1989. Verb movement, universal grammar, and the structure of IP. Linguistic Inquiry 20(3), 365–424; Roberts, Ian. 1993. Verbs and diachronic syntax. A comparative history of English and French. Dordrecht: Kluwer.; Ayoun, Dalila. 2005. Verb movement phenomena in Spanish: “mixed languages” and bilingualism. Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Press]. These adverbs are argued to be base-generated in the specifier positions of specific phrases; therefore, any word order variation is due to verbal head movement [e.g. Cinque, Guglielmo. 1999. Adverbs and functional heads: A cross-linguistic perspective. New York, NY: Oxford University Press; Alexiadou, Artemis. 1997. Adverb placement: A case study in asymmetric syntax. Amsterdam: John Benjamins]. In earlier stages of English, all verbs moved to a higher position, namely tense (T); however, in present English, only auxiliary verbs are still capable of moving to T. This shift in movement constraints is attributed to a loss in agreement features on main verbs, whereas the English auxiliaries are morphologically richer and still exhibit movement. This paper analyzes the interaction of TP adverbs and auxiliaries in spoken corpus data in order to provide empirical evidence to support the claim that English speakers prefer auxiliary movement to T. It finds auxiliary movement occurs but there is a variation between auxiliary have and be. Auxiliary have moves less frequently above higher adverb probably than it does above lower adverb always, whereas auxiliary be consistently moves to T regardless of adverb. The hypothesis is that movement varies because auxiliary have is less morphologically rich in comparison to auxiliary be.

Adverbs in Saudi Northern Region Dialect of Arabic (SNRDA)

<p>With my belief that there is not a comprehensive theory of adverb position, Iatridou (1990), Bobaljik & Jonas (1996), in this paper, I investigate the morph-syntax and distribution of adverbs in one of the Saudi dialects, Saudi Northern Region Dialect of Arabic (SNRDA); a dialect that is spoken in the Northern Region of Saudi Arabia. I will show that adverbs at least in SNRDA are not descriptively as simple as it is assumed for other dialects of Arabic studied by Nuha (2005) and in the Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) investigated by Fassi (1997, 1998). What is interesting in this dialect is that intonation plays role in where the adverbs appear and how they are interpreted; in addition, with the change of the adverb position, there is a change in the meaning. The contribution of this paper is that it discusses adverbs in a dialect which many of its syntactic facts remain largely un-described and adds to our understanding of the syntactic behavior of the adverbs.</p>

The Influence of Explicit Cross-Linguistic Consciousness- Raising on the EL Writing of the Iranian English Language Learners

This study investigates the effects of cross-linguistic consciousness-raising through comparing and contrasting learners’L1 (Persian) and L2 (English) on their L2 written performance. To do this, sixty intermediate language learners, both male and female, learning English at two private institutes in Yasuj, Iran, were chosen as the participants of the study. They were assigned to four groups, two experimental groups and two control groups. Two language items, i.e. subject-verb agreement and adverb position in a sentence were chosen as the materials to be taught in the study. At first, Three kinds of tests, i.e. recognition test, translation test and writing production test checking the participants’ recognition of errors, proper use and correct production of the chosen language items respectively, were administered as the pre-tests. Afterwards, the experimental groups were taught through consciousness-raising techniques but the control groups were taught through traditional ways of grammar teaching. After four weeks of instruction, the participants were given post-tests being parallel to the pre-tests. The mean scores comparison and contrast for the pre-tests and the post-tests through using Paired T-test revealed a significant improvement in the experimental group’s written performance with regard to recognition, proper use and production of the two chosen language items. The findings indicate that cross-linguistic consciousness-raising activities do have a positive effect on the participants’ written performance.

Non-lyadverbs in preverbal position: the case offast

English adverbs are often classified according to the range of positions that are available to them. One such group includes items which allegedly can only occupy the VP-final position. These are typically non-lyadverbs such ashard,wellandfast. However, although counterexamples to this claim can be found in corpora, few attempts have been made to reconsider the distributional characteristics of these adverbs. This article therefore offers a corpus-based analysis of the adverbfast, whose preverbal occurrence has so far been largely ignored. The analysis seeks to establish the extent – expressed quantitatively – to whichfastis found in this position. We also explore the typical contexts of preverbalfastand investigate factors which may be responsible for the variation between preverbal and postverbal positions. We show that the nature of these factors may be genre-related, lexico-grammatical, syntactic, semantic or pragmatic, and that adverb position may be determined by a combination of these factors.

Measuring Korean adult learners’ explicit and implicit knowledge of English grammatical structures

The study investigates Korean English learners’ explicit and implicit knowledge of 17 grammatical structures. Participants consisted of 100 undergraduate and graduate school students. Their explicit and implicit knowledge was measured using the Untimed Grammatical Judgment Test, the Metalinguistic Knowledge Test, and the Ellicited Oral Imitation Test, all of which were developed by Ellis (2005, 2006). The study also examines the relationships between multiple learner variables and the two types of knowledge. The study results show that the Korean English learners possessed more developed explicit grammar knowledge compared to their implicit knowledge. The verb complement, past tense, and third person singular -s were the top three highest scored structures in explicit knowledge, while the verb complement, possessive’s and adverb position were the highest for implicit knowledge. The past tense, third person singular -s, and since/for were highly scored for explicit knowledge but lower for implicit knowledge, while the possessive ’s, adverb position, and embedded question were high for implicit knowledge but low for explicit knowledge. Among the learner variables, previous experience living abroad showed a significant impact on both types of knowledge. The starting age of learning English and prior experience learning English grammar influenced only implicit knowledge. The pedagogical implications are provided along with suggestions for future study.

Verb movement as a teaching tool

Abstract – The article discusses the results of an experiment conducted as a follow-up to a previous research (Formisano, 2013) in which the theory of Verb Movement (Pollock, 1989) was used to teach the position of English adverbs to Italian students of English as a foreign language. The hypothesis underlying the experiment is that an explicit explanation of the deep computational mechanisms of a language should be more effective in resetting a parameter than a traditional descriptive explanation. The first experiment was conducted in 2008 with a total of 67 participants of which 38 were in their second year of Junior High School (mean age 12) and 29 were in their third year of High School (mean age 17). Eighteen students in their first year of university (mean age 20) participated to the follow-up experiment carried out in 2011. The methodology was the same for both studies. In the first phase the participants were tested to record their knowledge of the position of English adverbs. Then they were divided into two groups (for each age range). One was given a descriptive account of adverb placement, and the other was given a linguistic account of the reason why the two languages differ on adverb position, namely the verb movement theory. They were tested immediately after the explanation and again after 10 weeks. Results show a greater and longer lasting improvement in the ability to place adverbs correctly in those participants who were exposed to the linguistic account of the difference between the two languages compared to the ones who were only given the descriptive explanation

A statistical analysis of regional variation in adverb position in a corpus of written Standard American English

AbstractThis paper investigates whether the position of adverb phrases in sentences is regionally patterned in written Standard American English, based on an analysis of a 25 million word corpus of letters to the editor representing the language of 200 cities from across the United States. Seven measures of adverb position were tested for regional patterns using the global spatial autocorrelation statistic Moran's I and the local spatial autocorrelation statistic Getis-Ord Gi*. Three of these seven measures were indentified as exhibiting significant levels of spatial autocorrelation, contrasting the language of the Northeast with language of the Southeast and the South Central states. These results demonstrate that continuous regional grammatical variation exists in American English and that regional linguistic variation exists in written Standard English.

The syntax of direct quotes with special reference to Spanish and English

This paper provides an in-depth study of the syntax of direct quotes in Spanish. It compares the results to those reported for English (Collins and Branigan 1997, and Collins 1997), and reveals substantial differences between the languages. Not only do the two contrast with respect to the possibility for null subjects, V raising to T and adverb positions, but when subject-verb inversion occurs in quotative expressions, English but not Spanish (nor French) obeys the complex verb and the transitivity constraints, and bans sentential negation. It is argued here that the main differences arise from the overt positions V occupies and the way in which the null object of the quotative expression moves. The object always raises to an A'-position in Spanish, whereas in English it lands in an A-position in the inversion variant and in an A'-position in the non-inverted one. Essentially, little specific to the syntax of direct quotes is needed to account for the facts in Spanish since the construction partakes of well-established patterns of the language; in English, however, quotative inversion has a rather atypical constituent order that requires construction-specific mechanisms, such as short V movement to Asps, for example.