Pernilla Hallonsten Halling

vandlega/oft.
carefully/often

‘She had read the instructions carefully/often.’

2. 
   *Hún
   

she
hafDi
had
lesiD
read
leiDbeiningarnar
instructions-the
aldrei/ekki.
never/not

‘She had never/not read the instructions.’
Frequency adverbs like oft ‘often, frequently’ can also occur before the VP, as illustrated in (2.6).
(2.6) Icelandic (Indo-European) (Thráinsson 2007: 37)

Hún
she
hafDi
had
oft
often
lesiD
read
leiDbeiningarnar
instructions-the

‘She had often read the instructions.’
According to Thráinsson (2007), oft has slightly different meanings depending on its position. In example (2.6), oft appears to modify the entire sentence, meaning ‘It has often been the case that...’, exemplifying a sentence adverb (2007: 37). When oft is used in final position, as in (2.5a), the action denoted by the verb is instead modified, with the meaning ‘over and over’ – oft is then interpreted as a manner adverb (2007: 37). Again, this is a case where the position of the adverb matters for its semantic interpretation.
In summary, classifying adverbs is a complex matter, not only because of the prob- lematic nature of adverbs themselves, but due to the various criteria used. As argued
² Himmelmann & Schultze-Berndt (2005b) adopt the term pure manner from Geuder (2000), further discussed in section 2.3.2.

by Himmelmann & Schultze-Berndt (2005b), the most straightforward classification is that between predicate- and sentence-level adverbs, even though this is not always a clearcut distinction. Contrary to Himmelmann & Schultze-Berndt’s claim that internal constituency and morphological marking are not very useful for the classification of ad- verbs, I will show that they do play a significant role. Moreover, they can be connected to semantics, as will be illustrated in chapters 5–8.

2.