Extravagance, productivity and the development of -ingly adverbs
The paper claims that the process of deriving -ly adverbs from present participles has become increasingly productive over the last 500 years. It is argued that many ‘-ingly adverbs’ are extravagant, in the sense of Haspelmath (1999). This claim is supported by the fact that such adverbs are very common in prose fiction, which is a genre that admits of extravagant language. It is hypothesised that the category of -ingly adverbs has evolved around a few frequent types but that extravagant -ingly uses have caused the category to expand by pushing at the boundaries of what is considered acceptable. The change is explained within an exemplar-based model of morphological change and against the backdrop of ‘adverbialisation’.
Article outline
- 1.Introduction: Aims and organization
- 2.Theoretical preliminaries: Extravagance, creativity and productivity
- 2.1Extravagance and creativity
- 2.2Productivity
- 3.The development of -ingly adverbs: relevant research
- 4.Data sources and methodology
- 5.The quantitative development of -ingly adverbs
- 5.1The overall productivity of -ingly derivation: data from the four fiction corpora
- 5.2The development of the various adverbial categories: An overview
- 5.3Some innovative users – and uses – of -ingly adverbs and the question of extravagance
- 6.Discussion
- 6.1Research question 1: The productivity of -ingly derivation in the last 500 years
- 6.2Research question 2: Factors triggering the development of -ingly adverbs and the role of extravagance
- 6.3Adverbialisation, analogues, and the role of frequent users
- 7.Conclusion
-
Acknowledgements
-
Notes
-
Data sources
-
References
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► pp. 119 ff.
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