Selected Papers from the Fourteenth International ... - STIBA Malang

Adverb-marking patterns in Earlier Modern
English coordinate constructions
Amanda Pounder
In addition to the common pattern of X-ly and Y-ly in the coordination of
adverbs, minority patterns such as X and Y-ly have also been observed in Early
Modern and Modern English texts. While the pattern is thought typical of
seventeenth- and eighteenth-century texts, examples can be found in current
English as well. This paper explores the question of whether the choice between
the patterns is due to aesthetic criteria such as eurythmy, the maintenance of
symmetry, or a desire to avoid repetition. It concludes that all three may play a
role. After considering the theoretical alternatives of paradigmatic selection and
morphological ellipsis in the analysis of the choice of the non-suffixed adverb in
coordinate constructions, it seems that both strategies are available to English
speakers. The morphological ellipsis strategy aligns English with a variety of other
languages which use zero morphology in similar constructions.
1. Introduction
The history of the marking of deadjectival adverbs in the English language is very
much still obscured by the interplay between written text and the spoken medium.
For example, it is hardly likely that the zero-form of the derived adverb as verbal
modifier (as in He handled that situation excellent) is a recent innovation, yet it appears
only very rarely in texts of any kind appearing before the twentieth century
(cf. e.g., Nevalainen 1994, 1997 & Pounder 2001, 2004). It would seem, further, that
a restriction of the zero-adverb in written text predates the period normally associated
with intense prescriptive pressure (Pounder 2007). It seems safe to propose
that the zero-form has long been typical of the spoken language, whether socially
stigmatized or not, or restricted to informal registers or not. Occasional occurrences
of the zero adverb in Early Modern English and Late Modern English texts
hint at a possible preferential selection of the zero adverb in a particular syntactic
context, namely in conjunction with another adverb. The present paper attempts
to account for such a preference with reference to both the word-formation system
1. I thank all referees for their helpful comments. The research on which this paper was based was
supported by the University of Calgary and the Universität Konstanz, for which I am very grateful.