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Article published In: Functions of Language
Vol. 31:3 (2024) ► pp.239–261

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Four types of English evidential -ly adverbs

Criteria, semantics and syntactic correlates

ORCiD logo with link | ACLC University of Amsterdam
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Available under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) 4.0 license.

For any use beyond this license, please contact the publisher at rights@benjamins.nl.

Open Access publication of this article was funded through a Transformative Agreement with University of Amsterdam.

Published online: 14 February 2025
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https://doi.org/10.1075/fol.24040.kem
Abstract
This paper focuses on the distribution, scope and semantics of UK English evidential -ly adverbs in declarative sentences. It draws on work done on the classification of English evidential adverbs into evidential categories of Functional Discourse Grammar (FDG), which makes use of a grammatical component made up of a layered hierarchy. The paper presents a qualitative analysis in terms of the meaning, scope, and position of evidential -ly adverbs. The FDG evidential subcategories are Reportative (reportedly), Inferential (presumably), Deduction (clearly) and Event Perception (visibly). Various FDG-related tests reveal more about the behaviour of English evidential adverbs. In order to carry out the tests, examples of the use of evidential adverbs in this paper have been constructed by the author and their acceptability judged by native speakers of South-East England. It becomes evident not only that the meaning of evidential adverbs in declaratives is context-dependent, which makes them chameleon-like, but also that the meaning of evidential -ly adverbs determines their scope, which itself is reflected in their formal behaviour. Furthermore, the paper confirms observations of others that the reportative evidential subcategory acts differently from the three other subcategories — inferential, deductive and event perception.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Evidentiality
  • 3.FDG and its evidential subcategories
    • 3.1FDG
    • 3.2Four types of evidentiality in FDG
  • 4.Testing for the four subcategories of evidentiality
    • 4.1The four types of evidential meaning in use
    • 4.2Contingency and contradiction
      • 4.2.1Single readings of evidential adverbs
      • 4.2.2Multiple readings
      • 4.2.3Intermediate conclusions
    • 4.3The exceptional status of the reportative
  • 5.Correlates: Some grammatical phenomena echoing the FDG classification of evidential adverbs
    • 5.1Scope and constituent order
    • 5.2Co-occurrence of evidentials
      • 5.2.1Reportative and inferential
      • 5.2.2Reportative and deduction
      • 5.2.3Reportative and event perception
      • 5.2.4Inferential and deduction
      • 5.2.5Inferential and event perception
      • 5.2.6Deduction and event perception
  • 6.Conclusions
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
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