Дипломная работа: Syntagmatic and paradigmatic peculiarities of adverbs in English

Adverbs vary in their structure. In accord with their word-building structure adverbs may be simple, derived, compound and composite [25].

Simple adverbs are rather few, and nearly all of them display functional semantics, mostly of pronominal character: here, there, now, then, so, quite, why, how, where, when.

D erived adverbs may be classified in several groups [30, 164]. The two largest groups are those formed from adjectives and participles by adding the suffix -ly, e. g.: hopefully, physically, strangely, falsely, occasionally, lately, immediately, constantly, purely, slowly, charmingly, etc.

There has been a marked discrepancy of opinion concerning deadjectival adverbs in terms of two mutually exclusive types of morphological derivation – inflection and word-formation [5]. Two views have been put forward, according to which adverbs are treated as either the inflectional paradigmatic form of a parent adjective or its derivative [6]. The former view can be refuted if we proceed from the notion of symmetry/asymmetry of the semantic structures. The structures are considered symmetric if they are characterized by both quantitative and qualitative convergence of their sense components; conversely, the parent and the resultant semantic structures are considered asymmetric if they diverge either in the number or in the character of the meanings conveyed [5].

According to Garipova N.D., adjectival and adverbial forms are asymmetric; the process of deriving adverbs from adjectives involves the semantic shift that yields two possibilities: the adverb may develop new meanings, or, more often, the semantic structure of the motivated adverb turns out to be more simplified and narrower in comparison with that of the motivating adjective [2]. For example, the adverb roughly retains only 3 meanings out of 17, inherent in the semantic structure of the adjective rough. All this leads to conclude that adverbs cannot be regarded as inflectional forms of adjectives.

The third group consists of those that are formed by means of the derivational prefix -a (phonemically [э]) to nouns, adjectives or verbs. Of about sixty of them in more or less common use nearly half are formed from nouns: aboard, aside, away, ahead, apart, across etc.The rest are about equally divided among those formed from verbs, e. g.: amiss, astir; from adjectives — anew, abroad.

In traditional grammars such words are generally classed as both adjectives and adverbs and they are so listed in most dictionaries, which seems hardly justified since from the structural point of view none of them can fit the basic adjective position between determiner and noun (We cannot say the aloud voice or the adrift boat) [30, 164].

The fourth group of derived adverbs originally very small, but in present-day English exhibiting signs of rapid growth includes those formed by adding the derivational suffix -wise to nouns.A few adverbs of this type are well-established words like clockwise, otherwise, likewise; others are recent coinages or nonce-words like crabwise and actor-wise. In American English the suffix -wise is most active and can be more freely attached to many nouns to create adverbs like personnel-wise. Such forms are recognised in writing by the use of the hyphen.

Then comes a smaller group of adverbs formed by the addition of the derivational suffix -ward(s) to a limited group of nouns; home- ward(s), forward(s), backward(s). Most adverbs of this group have two forms, one with the final -s and one without, variously distributed. The forms without -s are homonymous with adjectives: the backward child, he looked backward.

The less common suffixes are the following:

-fold -like -most -way(s)

twofold, manifold warlike innermost, outermost longways, sideways

Compound adverbs are formed of two stems: sometimes, somewhere, somehow, someplace, nowhere, everywhere, anyway, downstairs, etc. There are fewer than twenty of these in common use.

Composite phrasal adverbs consist of two or more word-forms, as a great deal, a little bit, far enough, now and then, from time to time, sort of, kind of, a hell of, a lot of, a great deal of, at least, at most, at last, to and fro, upside down. Such adverbs are lexically and grammatically indivisible and form a single idea.

Considered in their structure, composite phrasal adverbs may be classified as follows [30, 164]:

1) preposition + noun: at hand, at home, by heart, on horseback, on foot, in turn, to date;

2) noun + preposition + noun: arm in arm, day by day, day after day, day to day, face to face, word for word, year by year;

3) preposition + substantivised adjective: at last, at first, at large, in large, in full, in quiet, in short, in vain, of late, of old;

4) preposition + verbal noun made through conversion: at a guess, at a run, in a rush, on the move, on the run;

5) preposition + numeral: at first, at once, at one, by twos;

6) coordinate adverbs: by and by, on and off (= off and on), on and on;

7) pronoun + adjective (or participle): all right, all told, O. K. (all correct);

8) preposition + pronoun: after all, in all, at all.