'Basically speaking': A corpus-based analysis of three English adverbs and their formal equivalents in Spanish

This chapter investigates the properties of basically, essentially andfundamentally and their formal Spanish equivalents básicamente, esencialmente and fundamentalmente, in corpora. After an initial study of the frequencies of the adverbs, I examine their collocational behaviour and show that the three English adverbs, although they share some patterns, nevertheless have distinct collocational profiles. This is also true of the Spanish adverbs, but there is much more overlap. The chapter then reports on a study of the syntactic properties of the adverbs. I investigate their positions within the clause, and make comparisons between adverbs and across languages. The results are of interest not only from descriptive and comparative perspectives, but also for language teaching and learning.