Pernilla Hallonsten Halling

Summary of theoretical frameworks

As mentioned in the introduction to this chapter, the theoretical approaches that have been discussed here were chosen based on their contributions to the discussion of adverbs in general. Role and Reference Grammar (Van Valin 2005), with its layered clause structure, offers a clear classification of adverbs, although it naturally implies theoretical adherence to the approach. However, the peripheries on the different levels of the clause, and more specifically the parallel to the peripheries of the NP, elucidate similarities and differences between various types of modifiers, which apply also outside this syntactic theory. Role and Reference Grammar is also the only theoretical approach considered here that includes adverbs outside of the predicate level. A highly important point is that only aspectual adverbs, located in the periphery of the nucleus, modify the predicate alone, whereas manner and pace adverbs, located in the periphery of the core, modify both the predicate and its arguments. From a semantic perspective, Geuder (2000) shows that the notion of manner is not as uniform as it might first appear, and that adverbs can relate to events in a variety of ways. Functional Grammar (Hengeveld 1992; Hengeveld et al. 2004; Rijkhoff & van Lier 2013), limiting its scope to manner adverbs, points out the interesting connection between the predicative-only use of verbs and the non-predicative-only use of adverbs attested at least in English. Croft (1991, 2001, 2003) merely touches upon the role of adverbs in his typological approach to prototypical parts of speech, where room can be made for property words that modify predicates. Still, the theory as a whole has many implications for adverbs as a type of modifier. Modification is a secondary discourse function, and it seems that it must be dealt with based on what it is secondary to, namely predication. In conclusion, the adverb type that is the focus of this dissertation can be defined as Geuder’s pure manner adverbs, and/or Croft’s (somewhat modified) property modifiers within predicating expressions.

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