Natural Language and Linguistic Theory manuscript No.
(will be inserted by the editor)
Transforming Manner Adverbs into Subject-Oriented
Adverbs: Evidence from Japanese
Ai Kubota
Received: date / Accepted: date
Abstract It is well known that some adverbs in English, such as stupidly,
cleverly and clumsily, can be interpreted as manner adverbs or agent-oriented
adverbs depending on their positions in a sentence, e.g., John danced stupidly
vs. Stupidly, John danced. Three approaches are possible and have been proposed for this alternation: (i) positing an agent-oriented adverb as the basic
entry from which a manner adverb is derived (Ernst 2002), (ii) positing a manner adverb as the basic entry from which an agent-oriented adverb is derived
(McConnell-Ginet 1982), and (iii) positing two distinct lexical entries for the
two readings (Piñón 2010). I present data from Japanese which support the
second approach. However, there would be a problem if we directly adopt the
second approach for the Japanese data, since the adverbs that at first sight
look like agent-oriented adverbs in Japanese are not truly ‘agent’-oriented,
but rather ‘surface-subject’-oriented. I propose an analysis that does not suffer from this problem, by modifying an idea from McConnell-Ginet 1982 and
also incorporating the notion of comparison class from Ernst 2002. The discussion extends to another class of adverbs called ‘evaluative adverbs’, such
as fortunately and oddly, which show the same morphological property with
surface-subject oriented adverbs in Japanese.
Keywords Manner adverb · Agent-oriented adverb · Subject-oriented
adverb · Evaluative adverb · Japanese · Comparison class · Passive sensitivity
Ai Kubota
Department of Linguistics and Germanic, Slavic, Asian and African Languages
Michigan State University
B-331 Wells Hall
East Lansing, MI 48824-1027
Tel.: 517-353-0740
Fax: 517-432-2736
E-mail: [email protected]
2
Ai Kubota
1 Introduction
Jackendoff (1972) notes that “the category ‘adverb’ has traditionally been a
catch-all term” (p. 47). That being the case, the classification of adverbs is
not at all a simple task. Furthermore, whether a particular classification originally developed for some language is adequate for other languages as well is
another question. This paper sheds light on one such case, where a certain
category of adverbs established in one language (English) has a seemingly
equivalent class in another language (Japanese), but where the two categories
in the two languages turn out to have some different property. More specifically, I focus in this paper on a class of adverbs called agent-oriented adverbs
in English, such as stupidly, cleverly and clumsily, and the corresponding adverbs in Japanese, such as orokani-mo ‘stupidly’, kashikoku-mo ‘cleverly’, and
bukiyooni-mo ‘clumsily’. Of particular interest is the meaning alternation between the so-called ‘manner’ and ‘clausal’ readings that is observed in both
English and Japanese. Henceforth, I will refer to this phenomenon as the ‘manner/clausal alternation’.
It has been observed that in English a class of adverbs such as stupidly,
cleverly and clumsily have more than one interpretation when they appear in
the auxiliary position as in (1-a), whereas the meaning is unambiguous when
they appear in the sentence-initial position (1-b) or the final position (1-c)
(Jackendoff 1972).1
(1)
a.
John stupidly danced. (Ambiguous)
(i) ‘The manner in which John danced was stupid.’
(ii) ‘It was stupid of John to have danced.’
b.
Stupidly, John danced. (Unambiguous)
‘It was stupid of John to have danced.’
c.
John danced stupidly. (Unambiguous)
‘The manner in which John danced was stupid.’
While adverbs in the auxiliary position allow both the manner interpretation (‘the manner in which . . . ’) and the ‘clausal’, or the ‘sentential’, interpretation (‘it was stupid of John to . . . ’), adverbs in the sentence-initial
position can only be construed in the clausal interpretation, and adverbs in
the sentence-final position can only be construed in the manner interpretation.
There are some general questions regarding this phenomenon. First of all,
are adverbs of this kind lexically ambiguous? If not, how are the two interpretations derived from a single lexical source? Either way, what is the
1 Wyner (2008: 255) notes that adverbs can be interpreted as manner adverbs even in
the sentence initial position, when “the overall sentence implies a contrast; that is, we use
[(i)] to deny some previous assertion” (for example, in a context where the speaker wants
to deny the statement “Bill kissed Jill reluctantly”).
(i)
Passionately, Bill kissed Jill.
In this paper, I do not consider cases that involve this additional focus effect.
Transforming Manner Adverbs into Subject-Oriented Adverbs
3
lexical/semantic relation between the two interpretations? Furthermore, how
common is this lexical relation cross-linguistically? In this paper, I take a look
at this kind of manner/clausal alternation in Japanese, in which there is a
morphological distinction between manner adverbs and clausal adverbs unlike
in English, and propose a compositional semantic analysis of the two readings.
As shown above, in English, it is the position of the adverb that disambiguates the interpretation. In Japanese, the two readings are instead disambiguated morphologically. As Sawada (1978) notes, orokani ‘stupidly’ only
has the manner reading, whereas orokani-mo in (3) with the particle mo only
has the clausal reading, both regardless of the position in the sentence.2 This
means that there is no ambiguity of the kind found in the English example
(1-a).
(2)
a.
b.
(3)
a.
b.
John-wa orokani odotta.
John-top stupidly danced.
‘John danced stupidly.’ (Unambiguous; Manner only)
Orokani John-wa odotta.
stupidly John-top danced.
‘John danced stupidly.’ (Unambiguous; Manner only)
John-wa orokani-mo odotta.
danced.
John-top stupidly
‘Stupidly, John danced.’ (Unambiguous; Clausal only)
Orokani-mo John-wa odotta.
stupidly
John-top danced.
‘Stupidly, John danced.’ (Unambiguous; Clausal only)
Morphologically speaking, it seems as if the particle mo transforms a manner adverb into the corresponding clausal adverb.
(4)
manner adverb + mo → clausal adverb
According to Sawada (1978), this particle, as far as this phenomenon is concerned, is a kind of interjectional particle which has a function that marks the
speaker’s subjective attitude toward the proposition.3
2 In Japanese, the position of adverbs within a sentence is quite free as long as they precede
the verb. Focusing (by adding phonological prominence, for example) does not affect the
interpretation of the adverb as far as the manner/clausal alternation is concerned.
3 The interjectional use of mo is often called eetan no mo ‘exclamatory mo’ such as in
(i).
(i)
Kono-ko-mo zuibun ookiku-natta naa.
This-child-mo a.lot big-became excl
‘This child has become so big!’
Mo is found in other uses, e.g. as an additive particle and (a part of) NPIs as shown below.
(ii)
a.
John-mo kita.
John-mo came.
‘John also came (in addition to someone else).’
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Ai Kubota
This mo-alternation occurs systematically with adverbs such as kashikoku
(-mo) ‘cleverly’, daitanni (-mo) ‘boldly’, namaikini (-mo) ‘impertinently’, teeneeni (-mo) ‘carefully; politely’, shinsetsuni (-mo) ‘kindly’, busahooni (-mo)
‘rudely’, and so on. However, this morphological alternation is found only with
adverbs that have adjectival stems. Thus, for example, the manner adverb
kichinto ‘neatly; decently; properly’, which does not have an adjectival counterpart, does not have the manner/clausal alternation (*kichinto-mo), thus no
clausal use, even though there is nothing semantically anomalous about the
would-be clausal meaning of this adverb (e.g., ‘Neatly, they gave us an extra
pillow and towel.’).
As far as the Japanese data are concerned, it seems natural to hypothesize that, for adverbs that display the manner/clausal alternation, clausal
adverbs (which are morphologically more complex) are derived from manner
adverbs. However, in the previous literature on this alternation (in English),
it is still controversial whether the clausal meaning and the manner meaning
share the same lexical source. For example, while McConnell-Ginet (1982) proposes to derive clausal adverbs from manner adverbs, other authors such as
Ernst (2002), Rawlins (2008), Geuder (2002) pursue an opposite approach in
which manner adverbs are derived from clausal adverbs. There is still one more
possibility, that is, to say that these adverbs are lexically ambiguous, which is
a position taken by Wyner (2008), and possibly Piñón (2010) too. However,
this last approach, if it is simply assumed that the manner adverb stupidly
and the clausal adverb stupidly each have distinct and unrelated lexical entries, seems to lose the insight that these two kinds of adverbs are somehow
related and that this relation is not accidental but systematic and observable
across languages.
In the following section, I review the previous studies just mentioned and
point out problems and difficulties that they face in analyzing especially the
Japanese data just introduced. Then in section 3, I propose my analysis of
manner/clausal alternating adverbs, building on ideas from Ernst (2002) and
McConnell-Ginet (1982). In section 4, I discuss passive sensitivity, a phenomenon in which passive sentences with an adverb of a certain class have
more than one interpretation, even though the corresponding active sentences
with the same adverb have only one interpretation. The passive sensitivity
data discussed in this section will make clear why I adopt the terminology
‘surface-subject-oriented adverb’ (instead of the more familiar ‘agent-oriented
adverb’) for Japanese in this paper (see below). In section 5, I briefly discuss
a class of adverbs often called evaluative adverbs, which also undergo the mo
attachment in Japanese. Section 6 summarizes and concludes the paper.
b.
Dare-mo ko-nakatta.
Who-mo come-neg.pst
‘No one came.’
I do not know whether it is possible to have a unified analysis that covers all the instances
of mo.
Transforming Manner Adverbs into Subject-Oriented Adverbs
5
Before moving on to the next section, let me clarify the terminology and
the classification of adverbs that I assume throughout this paper. As for the
English adverbs, I adopt the classification used in Ernst 2002. As for the
Japanese adverbs, I suggest a slightly different terminology in order to reflect
the behavioral difference between adverbs in Japanese and adverbs in English.
According to Ernst (2002), the adverb stupidly in its clausal sense as in
(1-b) belongs to the class of adverbs called agent-oriented adverbs, which is a
subclass of subject-oriented adverbs as in (5). The adverb stupidly as in (1-c)
belongs to a different class of adverbs, i.e., manner adverbs. 4
(5)
Subject-oriented adverbs (Ernst 2002)
a. Agent-oriented adverbs: cleverly, stupidly, wisely, tactfully, foolishly, rudely, secretly, ostentatiously, intelligently
b. Mental attitude adverbs: reluctantly, calmly, willingly, anxiously,
eagerly, frantically, absent-mindedly, gladly, sadly
Subject-oriented adverbs are those that “express some additional information
about the subject” (Jackendoff 1972: 57), as the paraphrase in (6-b) shows.5
(6)
a.
b.
{Cleverly/Reluctantly}, John spilled the beans.
John was {clever/reluctant} to spill the beans.
Among subject-oriented adverbs, what Ernst calls agent-oriented adverbs are
those that “indicate that an event is such as to judge its agent as ADJ with
respect to the event” (Ernst 2002: 54), whereas what he calls mental attitude adverbs are those that “describe, most fundamentally, a state of mind
experienced by the referent of the subject of the verb” (ibid.: 63). In what
follows, I mainly use stupidly and reluctantly as representative examples of
agent-oriented adverbs and mental attitude adverbs respectively.
In addition to subject-oriented adverbs, there is another class of adverbs,
which is called speaker-oriented adverbs, following Jackendoff (1972) and Ernst
(2002). Speaker-oriented adverbs can also be considered as a kind of clausal
adverbs, as they modify clausal elements rather than verb phrases. Among
speaker-oriented adverbs, there are three subclasses: speech-act (honestly, frankly,
roughly, etc.), epistemic (perhaps, probably, maybe, etc.), and evaluative (unbelievably, unfortunately, luckily, strangely, etc.). Examples are from Ernst
(2002: 69).
(7)
a.
Honestly, who would do such a thing?
(Speech-act adverb)
4 Agent-oriented adverbs are also called “thematically dependent adverbs (TDAs)”
(Wyner 1998) and “Ad-VPs” (McConnell-Ginet 1982).
5 As pointed out by one of the reviewers, the paraphrase in (i-b) is not appropriate for
some of the adverbs listed in (5), e.g., *John was {secret/calm} to spill the beans. Since the
adverbs secretly and calmly does not appear in Jackendoff’s (1972) list of subject-oriented
adverbs, it is either the case that the paraphrase ‘SUBJ was ADJ to . . . ’ is not adequate for
subject-oriented adverbs or the adverbs secretly and calmly are not supposed to be classified
as subject-oriented adverbs. See also footnote 7.
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Ai Kubota
b.
c.
The markets will perhaps respond to lower interest rates. (Epistemic adverb)
Unbelievably, she decided to buy a camel.
(Evaluative adverb)
I briefly discuss evaluative adverbs in Japanese in section 5 to examine whether
my proposal about mo is on the right track, since evaluative adverbs are
another class of adverbs in Japanese that allow the mo-attachment just like
orokani-mo ‘stupidly’.
As for the adverbs in Japanese, I adopt a different terminology. Specifically, I will not call the class of adverbs that includes orokani-mo ‘stupidly
(clausal)’ ‘agent-oriented’ adverbs. Instead I will call them ‘surface-subjectoriented adverbs’ (SS-oriented adverbs), since these adverbs in Japanese are
not strictly ‘agent’-oriented (section 3 and section 4.2), and it is misleading to
call them so. As shown in the next section, previous analyses that are based
on observations about agent-oriented adverbs in English cannot be directly
adopted to account for the nature of SS-oriented adverbs in Japanese.
2 Previous Studies on the Manner/Clausal Alternation
There are mainly three possible approaches to the manner/clausal alternation.
The first approach is to posit a clausal adverb as the basic and derive a manner
adverb form it. The second approach is to posit a manner adverb as the basic
and derive a clausal adverb from it. The third approach is to give up deriving
one from the other and simply posit two versions for each adverb that exhibits
the manner/clausal alternation. In the following subsections, I will first review
Ernst 2002, which takes the first approach, and then McConnell-Ginet 1982,
which takes the second approach, followed by Piñón 2010, which, as far as I
can tell, goes for the third view.
2.1 Ernst 2002
According to Ernst (2002), the manner and clausal readings of each adverb
are closely related to each other in such a way that manner readings are verbmodifying versions of adverbs whose lexical entries are the clause-modifying
adverbs that yield agent-oriented readings. He also points out two major ways
in which the two readings differ. The first is that manner readings “describe
some sort of external manifestation that may or may not reflect the internal
reality” ?? 56]ernst2002. For example, the sentences in (8) ((2.43) in Ernst
2002), show that the post-verbal manner adverbs ‘manifest’ (or ‘show properties typical of’) stupidity and cleverness without Alice the spy actually being
stupid or clever at the moment.
(8)
a.
b.
Alice cleverly answered stupidly in order to keep her identity secret.
Alice stupidly answered cleverly and gave her secret identity away.
Transforming Manner Adverbs into Subject-Oriented Adverbs
7
The second difference he points out – the observation which I take to be
critical and which will be crucial in my analysis too – is that manner readings
and agent-oriented readings differ in terms of the comparison class for events.
Take a pair of examples in (9) ((2.44) in Ernst 2002). In (9-a), “she is judged
rude because of the event of her leaving, as opposed to other things she could
have done, most especially not leaving”, whereas in (9-b), “she is judged rude
on the basis of something about her leaving – some property of her leaving
that we sometimes call a manner, which distinguishes this leaving event from
other possible leaving events. For example, she might have left without saying
good-bye, by slamming the door, or with a few choice imprecations on her way
out” ?? 57]ernst2002.
(9)
a.
b.
Rudely, she left.
She left rudely.
This means that, for agent-oriented readings the comparison class consists of
various possible things that the subject could have done, whereas for manner readings, the comparison class is a set of more specific kinds of events
(e.g., leaving events in the above example). As Ernst (2002) notes, the notion of comparison class is necessary anyway for the interpretation of gradable
predicates in general such as tall, hot, cute, and so on. Since adverbs such as
stupidly, cleverly, and so on, are indeed gradable (as we can form a question
that specifically asks the degree, e.g., How stupidly did he dance? ), comparison classes undoubtedly play a role in the interpretations of these adverbs too.
Therefore, it is desirable to adopt the notion of comparison class, which is an
independently motivated notion, if comparison class is the key to distinguish
the two meanings.
As for the semantic representations of manner and agent-oriented adverbs
and how they are related to each other, Ernst (2002) takes the agent-oriented
version in (10-a) as basic (the lexical entry for the adverb rudely), and proposes
an operation called the Manner Rule which converts an agent-oriented adverb
into the corresponding manner adverb (10-b).6
(10)
a.
b.
The event e warrants positing more rudeness in Agent than the
norm for events. 7
The event e manifests more rudeness in Agent than the norm for
Specified Events.8
Although I agree that the notion of comparison class plays a crucial role
for gradable adverbs, there are remaining questions for this approach both
theoretically and empirically. First, from a theoretical point of view, there
is room for discussion on the adequacy of the Manner Rule. For example,
6
For the precise implementation of the Manner Rule, see Chapter 2 in Ernst 2002.
If Ernst’s (2002) analysis is correct, secretly cannot really be an example of agentoriented adverbs, since the expression ‘the event e warrants positing more secret in Agent
than the norm for events’ is not straightforwardly interpretable (see also footnote 5).
8 ‘Specified Events’ in (10-b) is determined by the verb phrase that the adverb modifies.
7
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Ai Kubota
at what point of derivation does this rule apply? Is there any restriction for
the application of this rule? Is this a language-specific rule? How does the
Manner Rule fit in a framework of compositional semantics? Furthermore,
there is an empirical difficulty especially when we turn to the manner/clausal
alternation in Japanese. Note that in Japanese it is manner adverbs that are
morphologically simplex.9
mo-attachment
−−−−−−−−−→
(11)
manner adverb
orokani ‘stupidly’
SS-oriented adverb
orokani-mo ‘stupidly’
←−−−−−−−−−−−−−
Ernst’s Manner Rule
If we directly adopt Ernst’s (2002) approach (i.e., if we take agent-oriented
adverbs to be basic and adopted the Manner Rule), then we would have to
assume that mo’s function is to cancel the application of the Manner Rule
(since the mo-less version is unambiguously a manner adverb). Alternatively,
we might assume that the lexical item orokani (with an underlying agentoriented meaning) is never interpretable without the obligatory application of
the Manner Rule, or with the attachment of a semantically vacuous morpheme
mo. But it seems highly unlikely that a lexical item that is never interpretable
without an obligatory application of an additional lexical operation like the
Manner Rule (which itself is already a highly unnatural situation) becomes
suddenly interpretable in the presence of an overt but meaningless morpheme.
Thus, as far as the Japanese data is concerned, I suggest to take the other way,
that is, compositionally deriving the clausal reading via the combination of the
manner adverb and mo. Although I depart from Ernst’s (2002) approach in
this respect, I adopt his idea of capturing the difference between agent-oriented
and manner readings via the notion of comparison class.
2.2 McConnell-Ginet (1982)
According to McConnell-Ginet (1982), adverbs are always construed directly
with a verb.10 In the case of manner adverbs as in (12), the adverb rudely is
construed with the verb departed, and adds some meaning to the verb. On the
other hand, agent-oriented adverbs in (13) are not syntactically sisters to the
verb departed but to the higher abstract verb acted.
(12)
a.
Surface structure: Louisa departed rudely.
9 This pattern in which the manner adverb is morphologically simpler does not seem
to be limited to Japanese, as it is also attested in other languages such as German (e.g.,
klugerweise ‘cleverly’, which consists of klug ‘clever’ and weise, can only be interpreted as a
agent-oriented adverb). The Manner Rule would be more convincing if there is a significant
number of languages in which the morphological relation between the two adverbs is the
opposite of (11). I do not know of any such language.
10 To be more precise, adverbs are actually considered as an argument of the verb and not
really a modifier.
Transforming Manner Adverbs into Subject-Oriented Adverbs
(13)
9
b.
LF: Louisa [ departed rudely ]
a.
Surface structure: Louisa rudely departed. (rudely with an agentoriented meaning)
LF: Louisa [ acted rudely to depart ]
b.
In this approach, the interpretation of an adverb depends on which verb the
adverb is construed with, either the main verb depart or the higher, abstract
verb act. The manner adverb meaning is considered as semantically basic,
and the agent-oriented reading is obtained by positing a different syntactic
structure (which receives a different semantic interpretation).
This idea seems to be plausible especially for the Japanese manner/clausal
alternation, since it allows us to analyze the manner adverb orokani as the
basic form. If this essentially syntactic analysis of the alternation is on the
right track, then we might take it to mean that mo is a morpheme that signals
that the adverb is located somewhere higher in the structure. In this way, we
would not have to rely on a special operation like the Manner Rule.
However, this approach has been criticized in the literature, especially with
respect to the adequacy of a higher verb like act. For example, Geuder (2002)
points out that a sentence like John departed cannot be paraphrased as John
acted to depart. He also raises a question with respect to the contrast between she acted rudely and she rudely acted. In order to capture the difference
between the two, the latter has to be analyzed as she acted rudely to act.
However, as Geuder (2002) points out, it is not clear what act to act means.
2.3 Piñón (2010)
With Geuder’s (2002) criticism in mind, Piñón (2010) argues that there is a
higher verb decide instead of act. Furthermore, he argues that this higher verb
decide does not exist by itself somewhere in the structure but is introduced
by the agent-oriented adverb. That is, the meaning of decide is part of the
meaning of agent-oriented adverbs. Thus, there are two different lexical entries
for stupidly, one for the manner reading (14-a) and the other for the agentoriented reading (14-b).11
(14)
a.
b.
Manner: Jstupidlym K= λVv,t λe.V (e) ∧ stupid(e)
a
Agent-Oriented: Jstupidly
K=
00
decide(e
, x, [λe0 .W (e0 , x)])∧
00
λWhe,vti λxλe.∃e
CAUSE(e00 , e) ∧ W (e, x) ∧ stupid(e00 )
In short, what is described as stupid in (14-a) is the event of V , where V is
denoted by the verb that the adverb modifies. In (14-b), on the other hand,
what is described as stupid is not the event of V but the event of x’s deciding
11 In the original proposal, the clausal argument of ‘decide’ is intensionalized. I have reproduced a simplified entry in (14) since this aspect of the analysis does not affect our
discussion below.
10
Ai Kubota
to do W , where W is denoted by the verb. In other words, stupidly, John
danced means that the event of John’s deciding to dance was stupid but does
not necessarily mean that the event of John’s dancing was.
Setting aside how precisely the above denotations work compositionally
and assuming that these two versions of stupidly derive manner and agentoriented meanings respectively, we are now back to our original puzzle: how
are manner readings and agent-oriented readings related to each other? Should
we give up deriving one of the two readings from the other and go for lexical
ambiguity? Of course, it is not impossible to derive one from the other, for
example, via the following operation that converts manner adverbs into agentoriented ones.
CAUSE(e00 , e) ∧ W (e, x)∧
(15)
λSvt,vt λWe,vt λxe λev .∃e00
(Jstupidly m K)
S(e00 , λe.decide(e, x, [λe0 .W (e0 , x)])))
CAUSE(e00 , e) ∧ W (e, x)∧
=λW λxλe.∃e00
Jstupidly m K(e00 , λe.decide(e, x, [λe0 .W (e0 , x)])))
00
00 CAUSE(e , e) ∧ W (e, x)∧
= λW λxλe.∃e
decide(e00 , x, [λe0 .W (e0 , x)]) ∧ stupid(e00 )
a
= Jstupidly K
However, it is unclear what this operation is and how common it is. Clearly,
this is not a simple type-shifting operation, but something that introduces the
higher verb decide and a causal relation between the two events (x’s decision
of doing W and x’s doing W ). It remains unclear how general this kind of
operation is cross-categorically, within a language, and across languages.
Moreover, there is another concern regarding the higher verb decide. That
is, whenever there is an agent-oriented adverb, the sentence is always predicted to mean that the subject decided to do the action. What, then, about
a sentence like (16), where John didn’t decide to die/fall?:
(16)
John-wa orokani-mo {shinda/koronda}.
John-top stupidly-mo {died/fell}
‘Stupidly, John died/fell.’
The prediction is that the agent-oriented adverb orikani-mo introduces the
higher verb decide and thus the sentence means that the subject decided to die.
However, the sentence does not necessarily mean that John committed suicide.
It simply means that it was stupid of him to have died, either voluntarily or
by doing something (perhaps inadvertently) that eventually led him to die
against his will. I will come back to this example at the end of section 3.
The fundamental problem of this approach lies in the assumption that
agent-oriented adverbs introduce a higher verb decide as part of their meanings. Not only is it problematic for accounting for data like (16) but it also loses
McConnell-Ginet’s (1982) insight that adverbs like stupidly are fundamentally
manner adverbs (or Ad-Verbs in her term) and that the agent-oriented reading
is sololy derivable from a structural difference.
Transforming Manner Adverbs into Subject-Oriented Adverbs
11
2.4 Summary
In this section, we saw three approaches to the manner/clausal alternation:
deriving the manner meaning from the agent-oriented (or, clausal) meaning,
deriving the agent-oriented meaning from the manner meaning, and lexical
ambiguity. Ernst’s (2002) analysis nicely captures the difference between the
two meanings in terms of comparison classes. However, since it takes the first
approach, the analysis is not suitable for Japanese, given the morphological
complexity of the form associated with the clausal reading. In this respect,
McConnell-Ginet’s (1982) idea that agent-oriented adverbs are originally manner adverbs is appropriate for the Japanese data, if we assume that mo is a
kind of syntactic marker that forces the adverb to be located structurally
higher. A problem remains, however, with respect to the higher abstract verb
act, as pointed out by Geuder (2002) and Piñón (2010). A lexical ambiguity
approach (Geuder 2002, Piñón 2010) cannot adequately explain why there is
a tight connection between certain kinds of adverbs across languages.
In the next section, I propose an analysis adopting two important insights
from the previous literature. One is the idea of comparison class from Ernst
2002 and the other is the idea from McConnell-Ginet 1982 that the manner reading is the basic and the clausal reading is derived from it. Unlike
McConnell-Ginet’s (1982) idea, however, I propose that the difference between
the two readings is not solely due to the structural differences but also because
of the effect of mo that changes the semantics of the adverbs it attaches to.
3 Deriving Clausal Readings from Manner Adverbs
Let us remind ourselves what the puzzle was. In English, adverbs like stupidly
and cleverly have the manner reading (‘the manner in which x did V was
stupid’) and the clausal reading (‘It was stupid of x to do V ’), and disambiguation is possible by word order – sentence-final adverbs give rise to manner
readings and sentence-initial adverbs give rise to agent-oriented/clausal readings. In Japanese, the two readings are instead distinguished morphologically:
orokani ‘stupidly’ (manner) in the simplex form vs. orokani-mo ‘stupidly’
(clausal) with mo. Based on this morphological fact, I will pursue an approach
that compositionally derives the clausal reading from the manner reading. In
section 3.1, I analyze the manner adverb orokani incorporating the notion of
comparison class from Ernst 2002. In section 3.2, I propose that the same manner adverb, when mo is attached, is turned into a clausal adverb. The reason
why the meaning changes from a manner meaning to a clausal meaning is not
because the adverb is adjoined to a head such as act, decide, nor any other
kind of head that is responsible for the agent thematic role, but because its
comparison class is readjusted to a broader one by adjoining mo. Thus, on
this approach, examples like (16) – in which adverbs like orokani-mo induce
clausal readings despite the absence of an agent – are unproblematic.
12
Ai Kubota
3.1 Manner Adverb orokani ‘stupidly’
Throughout the paper, I adopt a fairly common syntactic assumption that all
the syntactic arguments are base-generated within VP (or vP depending on the
syntactic framework), and that the subject is later moved to Spec, TP in order
to be assigned case. For the sake of simplicity, I ignore the temporal meaning
and assume that T is essentially semantically vacuous. The following shows
the derivation for a simple sentence John-ga odotta ‘John danced’ without an
adverb.
(17)
TP
λe.dance(John)(e)
T0
λxλe.dance(x)(e)
NP
John-ga
VP
λxλe.dance(x)(e)
T
λP λxλe.P (x)(e)
odotta
After the event variable e is existentially bound, the sentence asserts that
there was an event e such that e was a dancing event by John. Throughout
the paper, I assume that the event variable is existentially closed at some point
in the same way.
When there is a manner adverb as in (18), I assume that the adverb is
adjoined to VP.
(18)
John-ga orokani odotta.
John-nom stupidly dance.past
‘John danced stupidly.’
I propose the following denotation for the manner adverb orokani ‘stupidly’.
(19)
JorokaniK
= λPhe,vti λxλe.P (x)(e)∧stupid(e) > standard(stupid)([λe0 ∃x0 .P (x0 )(e0 )])
As shown in (19), stupid is a measure function of type hv, di – it takes an event
e and returns the degree of stupidity of e. standard(stupid)([λe0 ∃x0 .P (x0 )(e0 )])
gives the standard degree of stupidity, where what counts as ‘standard’ is
determined by the comparison class λe0 ∃x0 .P (x0 )(e0 ), a set of P -ing events by
some individual x0 . In the case of adjectives, the comparison class is a set of
individuals – of type he, ti (von Stechow 1984). For adverbs, on the other hand,
I assume that the comparison class is a set of events – of type hv, ti.
The way in which the meaning is expressed in (19) is based on one of the
standard views on gradable adjectives, according to which the truth condi-
Transforming Manner Adverbs into Subject-Oriented Adverbs
13
tions of gradable adjectives in their positive forms involve a context-dependent
standard degree. To be more precise, the representation in (19) should be considered as a combination of orokani and a null degree morpheme pos (von
Stechow 1984, Kennedy 1997) just like gradable adjectives such as tall, expensive, cute, and so on. The pos morpheme is responsible for the notion of
standard degree and comparison class. In the case of comparatives, a comparative morpheme (more or -er in English) replaces the pos morpheme and thus
there will be no standard degree determined context-dependently. Indeed, we
do find a comparative form of adverbs (e.g., more stupidly), which calls for
a compositional analysis extending the analysis of adjectival comparatives to
adverbial comparatives. It is possible to deal with the comparative form of
adverbs if we adopt the idea shared among the analyses of adjectival comparatives in general that the gradable predicate itself only contributes a mapping
relation between individuals (or, here, events) and degrees and that the reference to the contextual standard (if any) is separately contributed by the
empty pos operator. In this paper, however, I simply express the meaning of
gradable adverbs as a combination of measure function and pos for the sake
of convenience.
Let us now turn to the example (18) and see how the meaning is derived
compositionally.
(20)
TP
λe.dance(John)(e)∧
stupid(e) > standard(stupid)(λe0 ∃x0 .dance(x0 )(e0 ))
NP
John-ga
T0
λxλe. dance(x)(e)∧
stupid(e) > standard(stupid)([λe0 ∃x0 .dance(x0 )(e0 )])
VP
λxλe. dance(x)(e)∧
stupid(e) > standard(stupid)([λe0 ∃x0 .dance(x0 )(e0 )])
AdvP
λP λxλe. P (x)(e)∧
stupid(e) > standard(stupid)([λe0 ∃x0 .P (x0 )(e0 )])
VP
λxλe.dance(x)(e)
odotta
orokani
T
λP λxλe.P (x)(e)
14
Ai Kubota
The derived meaning is as follows: there was an event e such that e was a
dancing event by John, and the stupidity of e is greater than the standard stupidity, where the standard is determined by the comparison class that consists
of various kinds of dancing events involving some individual x0 as the dancer.
Since the comparison class is restricted to a specific kind of event (in this case,
dancing events) what counts as stupid is based on this restricted set, e.g. {x0 ’s
dancing with precise steps, x0 ’s dancing with a smooth hand movement, x0 ’s
dancing with his eyes rolled up into his head, . . .}. This is similar to the sentence ‘John did a stupid dance’ in which the adjective stupid directly modifies
the noun dance.
Just like gradable adjectives such as small and big as in a small elephant
and a big mouse, what counts as stupid depends on the comparison class that is
either explicitly mentioned or implicitly understood in the discourse. A small
elephant could be bigger than a big mouse, in which case the individual is
“small for an elephant” or “big for a mouse”. Similarly, the event that John
has engaged in does not have to be stupid in all respects and John himself does
not have to be stupid, but what he did was a stupid way or kind of dancing.12
3.2 Clausal Adverb orokani-mo ‘stupidly’
With the same denotation proposed in (19) for the manner adverb orokani
‘stupidly’, it is possible to derive the clausal reading when the particle mo
is adjoined first to adjust the comparison class appropriately. I propose the
denotation of mo as in (21). The first argument A is supposed to be supplied
by an adverb of type hhe, vti, he, vtii.
(21)
JmoK
= λAhhe,vti,he,vtii λP λxλe.A(λx0 λe0 .∃Q[Q(x0 )(e0 )])(x)(e) ∧ P (x)(e)
This is, in some sense, like the additive particle also – it introduces an additional predicate Q, in addition to the predicate P denoted by the VP.13 Mo
denotes a function from type hhe, vti, he, vtii to hhe, vti, he, vtii – it takes an
adverb as an argument and returns a function of the same type. Thus, when it
combines with the adverb orokani, it changes the adverb in the following way:
12
In this connection, I should note that there are proposals that view manner modification
as event kind modification (Landman and Morzycki 2003, Anderson and Morzycki 2014,
Gehrke 2014). It would be interesting to see if it is possible to integrate the notion of
comparison class and event kind modification, a task which I leave for future research.
13 Recall from above that mo has this additive function as one of its meanings (see footnote
3), but I will set aside further discussion on a more comprehensive analysis of mo.
Transforming Manner Adverbs into Subject-Oriented Adverbs
(22)
15
JmoK(JorokaniK)


λAhhe,vti,he,vtii λP λxλe.
0
λPhe,vti
λx00 λe00 . P 0 (x00 )(e00 )∧
=  A(λx0 λe0 .∃Q[Q(x0 )(e0 )])(x)(e) 
stupid(e00 ) > standard(stupid)([λe000 ∃x000 .P 0 (x000 )(e000 )])
∧P (x)(e)


∃Q[Q(x)(e)]
=λP λxλe  ∧stupid(e) > standard(stupid)(λe0 ∃x000 .∃Q[Q(x000 )(e0 )]) 
∧P (x)(e)
I suggest that the clausal adverb orokani-mo is adjoined to T0 . The following represents the derivation for the clausal meaning of orokani-mo.
(23)
TP
λe.∃Q[Q(John)(e)]
∧stupid(e) > standard(stupid)(λe0 ∃x000 ∃Q[Q(x000 )(e0 )])∧
dance(John)(e)
NP
John-ga
T0
λxλe.∃Q[Q(x)(e)]∧
stupid(e) > standard(stupid)(λe0 ∃x000 ∃Q[Q(x000 )(e0 )])
∧dance(x)(e)
AdvP
λP λxλe.∃Q[Q(x)(e)]∧
stupid(e) > standard(stupid)(λe0 ∃x000 ∃Q[Q(x000 )(e0 )])
∧P (x)(e)
Adv
orokani
mo
T0
λxλe.dance(x)(e)
VP
λxλe.dance(x)(e)
odotta
The derived meaning is as follows: there was an event e such that e is a
dancing event by John. In addition, there is another way Q to describe e –
for example, it could be ‘John’s moving’. However, since it only mentions the
existence of such a predicate Q, it is semantically trivial. The stupidity of e is
greater than the standard stupidity, where the standard is determined by the
comparison class that consists of a set of events e0 . The comparison class is
not restricted to the specific kind of events like various kinds of dancing but
it is a set of events e0 such that one could have involved in that event in some
way or another. Importantly, the representation in (23) does not entail that
John the subject is stupid. It simply says that the event that John danced was
stupid considering other things that one could have done. I believe that this
is correct because by saying “Stupidly, John danced”, it does not mean that
T
λP λxλe.P (x)(e)
16
Ai Kubota
John is stupid and he danced. What is expressed in (23) is more like “That
John danced was stupid”.14
In this way, I adopt the idea of comparison class from Ernst 2002 and let mo
transform a manner adverb into the corresponding clausal adverb by adjusting
the comparison class of the adverb. This analysis departs from his analysis,
however, in that instead of employing the Manner Rule to transform a clausal
meaning into a manner meaning, I derive the clausal meaning compositionally
from the manner meaning. In this respect, the present proposal is similar in
spirit to McConnell-Ginet’s (1982), although it is different from her analysis as
well, since it is not dependent on an abstract verbal head such as act or decide
that is responsible for introducing an agentive argument of some kind. As far
as the Japanese data is concerned, the present analysis is more appropriate in
view of cases in which no agent is arguably involved in the event expressed by
the sentence.
It is commonly argued that the subject of unaccusative verbs such as die,
fall, arrive and, so on, is actually base-generated as the complement of the
verb just like direct objects, and is assigned the patient or theme role instead of
the agent role. The argument is then promoted to the surface subject position
because of the case assignment reason. Adverbs like orokani-mo can appear
in a sentence with an unaccusative verb, as already pointed out and repeated
below.
(16)
John-wa orokani-mo {shinda/koronda}.
John-top stupidly-mo {died/fell}
‘Stupidly, John died/fell.’
If we analyze clausal adverbs like orokani-mo ‘stupidly’ as strictly agentoriented adverbs, (16) will be predicted to be unacceptable. The proposed
analysis does not rule out examples like (16), since what the adverb is oriented to is not what ensures the agentive subject but simply T0 , which is
typically considered as a sister to the surface subject.
One might wonder why clausal adverbs have to be located at T0 and not VP.
It is true, if we restrict our attention to sentences in the active voice, that we
can derive exactly the same meaning in the end by assuming that orokani-mo
‘stupidly (clausal)’ is a VP modifier (assuming that tense does not directly
affect the meaning of the adverb). However, as I will show in section 4, it
becomes clear why it is better to have SS-oriented adverbs with mo at the T0
level and not within VP when we turn to the behavior of SS-oriented adverbs
in Japanese in passive sentences. The prediction is that if clausal adverbs in
Japanese (i.e., SS-oriented adverbs) are indeed adjoined to T0 and are always
oriented to the surface subject, then they are always oriented to the surface
subject (the patient or theme argument in passive sentences) and never to the
14 In connection to footnote 5, this paraphrase can handle adverbs such as secretly as in
secretly, John danced. While it does not make sense to say “it was secret of John to have
danced”, the alternative paraphrase “that John danced was secret” may come close to what
it is intended to mean.
Transforming Manner Adverbs into Subject-Oriented Adverbs
17
underlying subject (the agent argument). As I show in the next section, this
is indeed the case in Japanese.
4 SS-Oriented Adverbs and Passive Sensitivity
In this section, I compare SS-oriented adverbs (or agent-oriented adverbs in
English) and mental attitude adverbs with respect to the issue of passive
sensitivity. After introducing the basic facts about this phenomenon observed
both in English and in Japanese, I show that Japanese SS-oriented adverbs
like orokani-mo ‘stupidly’ are not passive sensitive – they can only be oriented
to the surface subject – unlike English agent-oriented adverbs. I also point
out that there is a clear contrast between SS-oriented adverbs and mental
attitude adverbs. I propose that the reason is because the mo-attached adverbs
are always T0 -adjoined whereas the mo-less ones are attached lower in the
structure.
4.1 Passive sensitivity
It has been observed that some subject-oriented adverbs such as reluctantly,
intentionally, and deliberately are passive sensitive (McConnell-Ginet 1982,
Wyner 1998).
(24)
a.
b.
Kim reluctantly hit Sandy.
→Kim was reluctant.
Sandy was reluctantly hit by Kim.
(i) →Sandy was reluctant.
(ii) →Kim was reluctant.
(Active; unambiguous)
(Passive; ambiguous)
While the active sentence (24-a) has only one interpretation, namely, one in
which the subject (Agent) is reluctant, the passive sentence (24-b) has two
possible interpretations: either the surface subject (Patient) was reluctant or
the underlying subject (Agent) was.
According to McConnell-Ginet (1982), the reason for this ambiguity in
passive sentences is that there are two possible structural positions for the
adverb to attach to in the passive construction. The idea is that in passive
sentences, the passive auxiliary be may be interpreted as the ‘active’ be as
proposed by Partee (1977) or the predicate act in Dowty 1979. In such a case,
there are two verbs (or VPs) for the adverb to modify – either the lower verb
hit or the higher verb be. This is illustrated in (25) below.
18
(25)
Ai Kubota
a.
S
NP
VP2
Sandy
V
VP1
was
b.
ADV
V
reluctantly
hit
PP
by
Kim
S
NP
VP2
Sandy
ADV
V
VP1
reluctatnly
was
hit by Kim
When the adverb reluctantly is construed with the lower verb (VP1) as in
(25-a), it is oriented to the subject (Agent) of hit, whereas in case the adverb
is construed with the higher verb (VP2) as in (25-b), it is oriented to the
subject of active be, which is the underlying Patient of the verb hit. Depending
on the attachment site, the interpretation of the adverb changes, specifically
with respect who is reluctant. By contrast, in active sentences like (24-a), no
ambiguity arises, since there is no passive auxiliary that the adverb can be
construed with.15
Passive sensitivity is also observed in Japanese just like in English.
(26)
a.
John-wa Mary-o
iyaiya
dakishimeta.
John-top Mary-acc reluctantly hug.past
‘John reluctantly hugged Mary.’ (Unambiguous)
→John was reluctant.
b.
Mary-wa John-{ni/niyotte} iyaiya
dakishime-rareta.
Mary-top John-{by/by}
reluctantly hug-passive.past
‘Mary was reluctantly hugged by John.’ (Ambiguous)
(i) →John was reluctant.
(ii) →Mary was reluctant.
15 For Wyner (1998), the ambiguity is not explained in terms of structural differences, but
by assuming that there are two kinds of passive be: one that is semantically vacuous and
the other that assigns a volitional meaning to the subject. In this view, however, not only
do we need two kinds of be, but also two different ways to interpret the main verb: one with
volition and the other without.
Transforming Manner Adverbs into Subject-Oriented Adverbs
19
So it seems that the same explanation holds for the Japanese case as well. However, not all adverbs behave in this way. As I show below, some subject-oriented
adverbs, including orokani-mo ‘stupidly’, do not exhibit passive sensitivity.
4.2 Mental attitude adverbs vs. SS-oriented adverbs
In the previous subsection, we have only considered passive sensitivity with
respect to the subject-oriented adverb reluctantly. Although both reluctantly
and stupidly are examples of subject-oriented adverbs, they are said to belong
to different subcategories of subject-oriented adverbs – stupidly is a representative of agent-oriented adverbs and reluctantly is that of mental-attitude
adverbs – as mentioned in section 1. According to Ernst (2002), the two types
of subject-oriented adverbs differ in terms of their semantic representations.
Schematically, the interpretation of agent-oriented adverbs generally looks like
(27), whereas for mental attitude adverbs, the interpretation looks like (28).
(27)
The event e warrants positing more PADJ in Agent than the norm for
events.
(28)
The event e is {accompanied by/intended with} a greater degree of
ADJ by Experiencer (subject) than the norm for Experiencer.
Setting aside the subtle difference among the expressions ‘warrants positing’
and ‘accompanied by/intended with’, the major difference between the two
types of subject-oriented adverbs seems to be the kind of comparison classes.
For mental attitude adverbs, the comparison class is “restricted to the experiencers and is not determined by events” (Ernst 2002:pp. 62).
Ernst (2002) notes that mental attitude adverbs such as reluctantly also
tend to have two interpretations just like agent-oriented adverbs – the clausal
(mental attitude) reading (29-a) and the manner reading (29-b). In (29-a), the
subject is the experiencer, thus she is indeed reluctant. On the other hand,
in (29-b), the subject may not necessarily be reluctant – she might just be
showing such a behavior but she could be happy in her heart.
(29)
a.
b.
Mindy has reluctantly been going to accounting classes.
Mindy has been going to accounting classes reluctantly.
This seems to suggest that despite the difference between the two types of
subject-oriented adverbs (mental attitude and agent-oriented adverbs), the
mechanism of manner/clausal alternation is essentially the same.
However, the difference between mental attitude adverbs and SS-oriented
adverbs in Japanese seems to be more distinct compared to the difference between mental attitude adverbs and agent-oriented adverbs in English with respect to manner/clausal alternation and passive sensitivity. First, with Japanese
SS-oriented adverbs, we saw that the manner/clausal alternation involved mo
attachment, whereas mental attitude adverbs in Japanese are not compatible
with mo attachment. Since mental attitude adverbs in Japanese do not have
20
Ai Kubota
the manner reading, as shown in (30-a), the only way to express the manner
meaning is to employ a related but distinct modifier specifically referring to
the manner such as iyagatta yoosu-de ‘in a reluctant way’ in (30-b).
(30)
a.
John-wa iyaiya
gakkoo-ni kayotteiru.
(#demo,
John-top reluctantly school-to commute.npst (But
hontoo-wa gakkoo-ga suki-da.)
actually school-nom favorite-cop.npst)
‘John reluctantly goes to school. (#But, actually, he likes school.)’
b.
John-wa iyagatta yoosu-de gakkoo-ni kayotteiru.
(demo,
John-top reluctant manner-in school-to commute.past (But
hontoo-wa gakkoo-ga suki-da.)
actually school-nom favorite-cop.npst)
‘John went to class reluctantly. (But, actually, he likes school.)’
In English, on the other hand, there is no morphological distinction between
the manner and clausal readings.
Secondly, while both mental attitude adverbs and agent-oriented adverbs
are passive sensitive in English, only mental attitude adverbs, but not SSoriented adverbs, are passive sensitive in Japanese. In English, not only mental
attitude adverbs but also agent-oriented adverbs seem to be passive sensitive
as shown below.16
(31)
Mary was stupidly hugged by John.
a. (??)It was stupid of Mary to have been hugged by John.
b. It was stupid of John to have hugged Mary.
By contrast, SS-oriented adverbs are never passive sensitive in Japanese. The
adverb orokani-mo ‘stupidly’ in the passive construction can only target the
surface subject and never the underlying subject, and this judgement is quite
clear among native speakers.
(32)
Mary-wa orokani-mo John-ni dakishime-rareta.
Mary-top stupidly-mo John-by hug-passive.past
‘Stupidly Mary was hugged by John.’
a. It was stupid of Mary to have been hugged by John.
b. NOT: It was stupid of John to have hugged Mary.
As shown above in (26), it is not the case that passive sensitivity is not observed
at all in Japanese – it is observed with mental attitude adverbs.
At this point, it is worth noting that mental attitude adverbs in Japanese
are generally incompatible with mo, unlike SS-oriented adverbs, e.g. iyaiya ‘re16 However, it is less clear compared to mental attitude adverbs whether they are really
passive sensitive according to the native speakers I consulted with. While some speakers
accept both readings in (31), others report that it is difficult to interpret it as (31-a), hence
the marking ‘(??)’.
Transforming Manner Adverbs into Subject-Oriented Adverbs
21
luctantly, unwillingly’, shibushibu ‘grudgingly, reluctantly’, shikatanaku ‘involuntarily’, yorokonde ‘happily’, shinpaisooni ‘anxiously’, ochitsuite ‘calmly’.17
If this observation is correct, then what does the presence/absence of mo tell us
about the contrast between mental attitude adverbs and SS-oriented adverbs
in Japanese? Specifically, first, why do SS-oriented adverbs, but not mental
attitude adverbs, undergo the clausal/manner alternation and the mo attachment accordingly? And secondly, why do mental attitude adverbs (i.e. those
that do not have the mo particle) show passive sensitivity but not SS-oriented
adverbs?
As for the first question, one possible solution is to propose that the comparison classes for mental attitude adverbs are fixed, for example as in (33),
so that no matter where the adverb shows up in the structure – whether it
is adjoined to VP or to T0 – the comparison class is never readjusted. Thus,
adverbs are always interpreted as mental attitude adverbs and not as manner
adverbs, in which case the comparison class would consist of a set of some
specific kind of events that is denoted by the VP.
(33)
JiyaiyaK =
P (x)(e)∧
λP λxλe.
reluctant(e) > standard(reluctant)([λe0 .Experiencer(e0 ) = x])
In order for an adverb to be shifted to the corresponding manner adverb, its
comparison class needs to be adjusted to a set of some specific kind of events.
However, since it is already fixed as a set of events that an individual x with
sentience is involved in as an experiencer, there is no way it can be interpreted
as a manner adverb.
As for the second question, I suggest that SS-oriented adverbs with mo
are only allowed to attach to T0 . This explains why it is always oriented to
the surface subject. In order for the adverb to be oriented to the underlying
subject, it needs to be adjoined to the lower VP (i.e. below the higher VP)
according to the previous approaches (McConnell-Ginet 1982, Wyner 1998).
My suggestion is that this is ruled out since the adverb obligatorily adjoins to
T0 .
If this idea is on the right track, then one might wonder if there are any
other kinds of adverbs in Japanese that undergo the mo attachment and
whether this explanation still holds. In the next section, we briefly look at
one such case – a class of adverbs called evaluative adverbs.
5 Evaluative Adverbs
Let us step back at this point and see where we are. So far, we have mainly
discussed subject-oriented adverbs such as stupidly – especially those that are
called agent-oriented adverbs in English and what I call SS-oriented adverbs
in Japanese (section 3). We also compared them to mental attitude adverbs,
17
To my knowledge, the only exception is nesshinni-mo ‘eagerly’.
22
Ai Kubota
the other subkind of subject-oriented adverbs, such as reluctantly (section
4). I showed that, in Japanese, SS-oriented adverbs behave quite differently
from mental attitude adverbs with respect to the clausal/manner alternation
and passive sensitivity. Coincidentally, both phenomena involved the existence/absence of mo. First, I observed that SS-oriented adverbs in Japanese,
which happen to be typically attached by mo, are not passive sensitive: passive sentences with SS-oriented adverbs are not ambiguous, contrary to English
passive sentences with agent-oriented adverbs. On the other hand, mental attitude adverbs in Japanese, which happen to be mo-less are passive sensitive:
the passive sentences with mental attitude adverbs are ambiguous, as it is also
the case in English passive sentences with mental attitude adverbs. Based on
this fact, I proposed that the existence of mo indicates that the location of adverbs have to be T0 or somewhere external to VP. The purpose of this section
is to examine whether this proposal is on the right track. To do so, I now turn
to another class of adverbs called ‘evaluative adverbs’, such as fukooni-mo ‘unfortunately’ in the following example, koounni-mo ‘fortunately’, arigataku-mo
‘thankfully’, kimyooni(-mo) ‘oddly’, and mezurashiku(-mo) ‘uncommonly’.
(34)
Fukooni-mo taifuu-ga
shima-o
chokugeki-shita.
Unfortunately typhoon-nom island-acc direct.hit-did
‘Unfortunately, a typhoon hit the island.’
As one may notice from the example above, this is another class of adverbs in
Japanese that also involves mo. Although I will not propose an explicit analysis
of evaluative adverbs in this paper, I will examine the semantic property of
evaluative adverbs and the semantic contribution of mo. In particular, I will
show that the idea that mo-attached adverbs are always located somewhere
higher in the structure such as T0 is compatible with existing analyses on
evaluative adverbs such as Sawada (1978) and Potts (2005). Before reviewing
their analyses, let us briefly look at the overall semantic properties of evaluative
adverbs.
5.1 Semantic properties of evaluative adverbs
As I introduced in section 1, citing Ernst (2002), and also repeated below, evaluative adverbs are not classified as subject-oriented adverbs but as a subtype
of speaker-oriented adverbs.
(35)
a.
Subject-oriented adverbs:
(i) Agent-oriented adverbs (stupidly, cleverly, rudely, etc.)
(ii) Mental attitude adverbs (reluctantly, calmly, willingly, etc.)
b.
Speaker-oriented adverbs:
(i) Speech-act adverbs (honestly, frankly, roughly, etc.)
(ii) Epistemic adverbs (perhaps, probably, maybe, etc.)
(iii) Evaluative adverbs (unbelievably, unfortunately, luckily, etc.)
Transforming Manner Adverbs into Subject-Oriented Adverbs
23
Evaluative adverbs “represent the speaker’s evaluation of some state of affairs
according to how good or bad it is (luckily, unfortunately), how (ab)normal it
is (normally, strangely, curiously, surprisingly), its desirability (ideally, preferably), or a wide range of other criteria (e.g., for significantly, absurdly, conveniently, astonishingly, etc.)” (Ernst 2002: 76).
While many of the adverbs that are categorized as evaluative adverbs are
mo attached adverbs, it is not the case that all of them are, e.g., ainiku(*-mo)
‘unfortunately’, narubeku(*-mo) ‘preferably’, futsuuni(*-mo) ‘normally’. Adverbs that are not compatible with mo are those that are not morphologically
derived from adjectives, as it is also the case with SS-oriented adverbs. For the
purpose of this section, I will focus on those that are derived from adjectives
and for which mo is obligatory.
Unlike the mo-attachment on SS-oriented adverbs, however, the mo-attachment
on evaluative adverbs is in some cases optional. Morimoto (1994) reports that
there are three morphological types for evaluative and subject-oriented adverbs, with respect to the presence of mo.
(36)
a.
b.
c.
Not compatible with mo
ainiku(∗-mo) ‘unfortunately’
Mo is optional
saiwai(ni(-mo)) ‘fortunately’, kinodokuni(-mo) ‘poorly’,
kanshinni(-mo) ‘impressively’, mezurashiku(-mo) ‘uncommonly’,
unwaruku(-mo) ‘unluckily’
Mo is obligatory
fushigini-mo ‘mysteriously’, kannyooni-mo ‘generously’,
zannenni-mo ‘unfortunately; sadly; to one’s regret/disappointment’,
hinikuni-mo ‘ironically’, orokani-mo ‘stupidly’
According to Morimoto (1994), mo is obligatory for the adverbs that have a
corresponding manner adverbial meaning, thus mo’s function is to distinguish
evaluative adverbs from their corresponding manner adverbs. However, this
explanation is not adequate as the following examples show.
(37)
odotta.
a. *John-wa fushigini
John-top mysteriously danced
Intended: ‘John danced mysteriously.’
b. *John-wa hinikuni hanashita.
John-top ironically spoke
Intended: ‘John spoke ironically.’
c. *John-wa zannenni
koronda.
John-top unfortunately tumble.over
Intended: ‘John tumble over in an unfortunate way.’
If Morimoto’s (1994) explanation is correct, the sentences above should be
grammatical and all of them should represent manner meanings, because they
are the adverbs that are supposed to take mo obligatorily in their evaluative
uses as listed in (36-c). However, these examples are unacceptable, as Morimoto
24
Ai Kubota
(1994) notices herself, indicating that they cannot be used as manner adverbs,
at least by just taking mo away. At the moment, I do not have an alternative
explanation for the reason of mo-optionality with some evaluative adverbs.
What is clear, though, is that the morphological process of mo-attachment for
adverbs that are derived from adjectives is a phenomenon that is not limited
to SS-oriented adverbs but also commonly found in evaluative adverbs.
As the examples in (37) show, most evaluative adverbs in Japanese do not
have the manner adverbial meaning. Instead of being interpreted as manner
adverbs, most of them typically appear as part of small clauses of some kind
with verbs such as omou ‘to think’, kanjiru ‘to feel’, and kikoeru ‘to be heard’.
The -ni endings of the following adverbs indicate that they are categorically
adverbs rather than adjectives, in which case they should take either the na ending or a copular verb followed by a complementizer (e.g., fushigi-da-to
omou ‘think that it is mysterious’).
(38)
a.
b.
c.
omou.
Kono-dekigoto-o fushigini
This-incident-acc mysteriously think
‘I think this incident mysterious.’
Kono-hanashi-wa hinikuni omowareru.
This-story-top ironically seem
‘This story seems ironic.’
kanjirareru.
Kare-no fusanka-ga zannenni
He-gen absence-acc unfortunately feel.can
‘I feel unfortunate of his absence.’
In English, on the other hand, many adverbs have both manner and evaluative
meanings such as oddly, appropriately, and luckily. The examples in (39) and
(40) below are from Ernst (2002) and Potts (2005) respectively.
(39)
a.
b.
Oddly, Carol was dancing.
Carol was dancing oddly.
(Evaluative)
(Manner)
(40)
a.
b.
Luckily, Willie won the pool tournament.
Willie won the pool tournament luckily.
(Evaluative)
(Manner)
The difference between the two sentences in (39) is that “[i]n [(39-a)], on the
one hand, there is a fact about an event of dancing by Carol that is odd;
that is, it is odd that there is such an event, considering among other relevant
facts in context. The manner reading in [(39-b)], on the other hand, says
that there is a (Spec)Event [i.e., specific event] of dancing by Carol, which is
odd compared to other dancing events” (Ernst 2002: 76). Thus, the difference
between the two meanings can be explained in terms of comparison classes.
For evaluative adverbs, the comparison class consists of propositions (facts),
whereas for manner adverbs, it consists of a specific kind of events as mentioned
before (i.e., various kinds of dancing in the above example). Whether it can
be judged odd or not is determined by the relevant comparison class in the
discourse.
Transforming Manner Adverbs into Subject-Oriented Adverbs
25
As Ernst’s (2002) description above indicates, it seems that evaluative
adverbs modify something clausal or propositional, whereas manner adverbs
modify VPs. The idea that evaluative adverbs modify something clausal or
propositional seems to be quite common among other researchers, although
details may differ. In the following, I review a couple of analyses on evaluative
adverbs.
5.2 Sawada (1978)
Sawada (1978) uses various sentential operators to show that evaluative adverbs (along with other adverbs that he calls ‘sentential adverbs’) are not part
of the propositional level (or what he calls the ‘propositional stratum’) but
are included in a higher level (or the ‘attitudinal stratum’ in his words). This
is based on the observation that sentential adverbials are not included in the
scope of question (41-a), negation (41-b), imperative (41-c), and sentential
pronominalization (41-d) (Quirk et al 1972, Schreiber 1971).
(41)
a. *Does he fortunately know about it?
b. Obviously, he doesn’t want us to help him.
(obviously > NEG, *NEG > obviously)
c. *Country road, fortunately take me home.
d. A: Clearly, Hitler was a madman.
B: That’s false.
(That = ‘that Hitler was a mad man’)
Since the scope of question, negation, imperative and sentential pronominalization is supposed to be limited to the propositional level, sentential adverbials,
which are argued to belong to a higher level, are not included in the scope of
such operators.
This seems to be true for SS-oriented adverbs and evaluative adverbs in
general. The examples (42)-(45) correspond to the pattern in (41).
(42)
?*{Orokani-mo/Fukooni-mo} John-wa odotta-no-desu ka?
{stupidly/unfortunately}
John-top danced-n-cop Q
‘Stupidly/Unfortunately, did John danced?’
(43)
{Orokani-mo/Fukooni-mo} John-wa odora-nakatta.
{stupidly/unfortunately} John-top dance-neg.past
‘Stupidly/Unfortunately, John didn’t dance.’
(stupidly> NEG, *NEG > stupidly)
(44)
*{Orokani-mo/Fukooni-mo} odori-nasai.
{stupidly/unfortunately}
dance-imperative
‘Stupidly/Unfortunately, dance!’
(45)
A: John-wa {orokani-mo/fukooni-mo} Mary-o
dakishimeta.
John-top {stupidly/unfortunately} Mary-acc hug.past
‘Stupidly/Unfortunately, John hugged Mary.’
26
Ai Kubota
B:
Sore-wa uso-da
yo.
That-top false-cop sfp
‘That’s false.’
(Sore = ‘that John hugged Mary’)
In contrast to SS-oriented adverbs and evaluative adverbs, mental attitude
adverbs and manner adverbs can be included in the scope of question, negation,
imperative, and pronominalization, as shown in (46)-(49).
(46)
{Iyaiya/orokani}
John-wa odotta-no-desu ka?
{reluctantly/stupidly} John-top danced-n-cop Q
‘Did John danced reluctantly/stupidly?’
(47)
{Iyaiya/orokani}
John-wa odora-nakatta.
{reluctantly/stupidly} John-top dance-neg.past
‘John didn’t dance reluctantly/stupidly.’
(stupidly> NEG, NEG > stupidly)
(48)
{Iyaiya/orokani}
odori-nasai.
{reluctantly/stupidly} dance-imperative
‘Dance reluctantly/stupidly!’
(49)
A: John-wa {Iyaiya/orokani}
Mary-o
dakishimeta.
John-top {reluctantly/stupidly} Mary-acc hug.past
‘John reluctantly/stupidly hugged Mary.’
B: Sore-wa uso-da
yo.
That-top false-cop sfp
‘That’s false.’
(Sore = ‘that John reluctantly/stupidly hugged
Mary’)
This seems to suggest that mental attitude adverbs and manner adverbs in
Japanese, unlike SS-oriented adverbs, belong to a propositional level. It is
worth noting that the existence of mo coincides with the contrast above. That
is, the adverbs with mo are external to the propositional level, whereas those
without mo are part of the propositional level. However, just from this observation, it is not clear what semantic difference there is between the adverbs
with mo and those without it, nor how to formalize the semantic contribution
of mo.
As it was mentioned by one of the reviewers, the distinction between
‘propositional stratum’ and ‘attitudinal stratum’ by Sawada (1978) is reminiscent of Potts’s (2005) idea of ‘at-issue meaning’ and ‘CI meaning’. In the
next subsection, I will turn to Potts’s (2005) analysis of evaluative adverbs.
5.3 Potts (2005)
Potts (2005) notices the importance of the comma intonation accompanied by
evaluative adverbs. For example, the adverb luckily with the comma intonation
as in (50) is interpreted as an evaluative adverb, whereas the one without the
comma intonation as in (51) is interpreted as a manner adverb.
Transforming Manner Adverbs into Subject-Oriented Adverbs
(50)
a.
b.
c.
Luckily, Willie won the pool tournament.
Willie, luckily, won the pool tournament.
Willie won the pool tournament, luckily.
(51)
a.
b.
Willie luckily won the pool tournament.
Willie won the pool tournament luckily.
27
According to Potts (2005), evaluative adverbs (among other adverbs that
he calls ‘supplementary adverbs’) introduce multidimensional meanings by
contributing a CI proposition, but manner adverbs do not. He proposes the
interpretation of the adverb luckily as follows. It shows that the adverb luckily
has two possible extensional realizations.
(52)
luckily
{
λf λx.lucky(f (x)) : hhea , ta i, hea , ta ii
λp.lucky(p) : hta , ta i
Without the comma intonation, luckily only contributes an at-issue meaning. When the comma intonation is involved, the comma intonation (comma
below) converts the manner adverb luckily in (52) into an evaluative adverb.
(53)
comma
λP.P : hhta , ta i, hta , tc ii
Potts (2005) presents the following two analyses: the one with the manner
adverb luckily (54), and the one with the evaluative adverb luckily (55).
(54)
lucky(win(the(tournament))(willie)): ta
lucky: hta , ta i
(55)
win(the(tournament))(willie): ta
(win(the(tournament))(willie)): ta
•
comma(lucky)(win(the(tournament))(willie)):tc
comma(lucky): hta , tc i
win(the(tournament))(willie): ta
lucky:hta , ta i
The only difference between the two structures above is whether there is
comma involved or not. In (54), the meaning is one-dimensional and there
is no CI meaning involved. In (55), on the other hand, the meaning is multidimensional: the at-issue meaning simply says that Willie won the tournament,
and the CI-meaning says that it is lucky that Willie won the tournament.
Importantly, comma is essentially an identity function (λP.P ) as shown in
28
Ai Kubota
(53). Therefore, the at-issue meaning in (54), and the CI-meaning in (55) are
basically the same.
Apparently, then, the only difference between the manner adverbial meaning and the clausal (evaluative) meaning is whether the adverbial meaning is
included in the at-issue meaning, in which case it is interpreted as a manner
adverb, or in the CI meaning, in which case it is interpreted as an evaluative
or clausal adverb. While the idea that manner adverbs and evaluative adverbs
make meaning contributions to different levels or dimensions of meaning can
explain some of the differences between the two classes of adverbs, this alone
is not enough for explaining other semantic differences between the two. For
example, consider a case in which there are two adverbs, luckily and unluckily,
one being a manner adverb and the other being an evaluative adverb. The
following example is from Potts (2005) (although he does not give an explicit
analysis for it).
(56)
Unluckily, Willie luckily won the pool tournament.
Following the derivations (54)-(55), the sentence should be analyzed as follows.
(57)
lucky(win(the(tournament))(willie)): ta
•
comma(unlucky)(lucky(win(the(tournament))(willie))):tc
comma(unlucky): hta , tc i
lucky(win(the(tournament))(willie)): ta
unlucky:hta , ta i
The adverb luckily, which is a manner adverb in the given example, appears not
only in the at-issue meaning but also in the CI meaning, and the CI meaning
has both lucky and unlucky. This apparently is a contradiction, since comma is
essentially an identity function (λP.P ) as in (53), which leads us to expect that
the CI meaning is interpreted as something like ‘it is unlucky that it is lucky
that Willie won the tournament’. In order to interpret the sentence correctly,
we need the adverb luckily to be interpreted as a manner adverb and not as an
evaluative adverb. However, it is not clear how lucky in the CI meaning of the
example (57) is to be interpreted as a manner adverb, whereas lucky in the
CI meaning of the example (55) is interpreted as an evaluative adverb. This
problem arises because, as it is, Potts’s analysis does not take into account the
difference between manner meanings and evaluative meanings. In other words,
in addition to the idea that manner adverbs and evaluative adverbs make
meaning contributions to different dimensions of meaning, it is also necessary
to consider subtler semantic difference between the two adverbs, such as the
different comparison classes involved as in the analysis I have proposed above.
Importantly, for Potts (2005), evaluative adverbs are derived from manner
adverbs and what makes them evaluative adverbs is the existence of comma
Transforming Manner Adverbs into Subject-Oriented Adverbs
29
(the comma intonation). Thus, from this perspective, Japanese mo can be
thought of as a morpheme that converts manner adverbs into evaluative (or
other CI contributing) adverbs. If so, it is interesting to see from a crosslinguistic perspective that, in one language, the conversion is marked with
intonation, while in another language, there is a specific overt morpheme that
marks the conversion. Furthermore, from a theoretical point of view, it is
also interesting to see if it is possible to explain how the comparison class is
determined with the dimension difference. However, to adopt Potts’s (2005)
analysis for Japanese evaluative adverbs, it is necessary to adjust the system
so that it can explain the fact that evaluative adverbs in Japanese do not have
manner adverbial meanings even without mo (see the examples in (37)).
5.4 Summary
In this section, I showed that the mo attachment on adverbs is not limited to
SS-oriented adverbs but is also found in a subclass of speaker-oriented adverbs,
namely evaluative adverbs. The upshot is that the presence of mo seems to
indicate that the adverb is located higher in the structure compared to mental attitude adverbs which happen to be mo-less. Importantly, the proposed
analysis in section 3 does not force mo to transform the adverb strictly into
SS-oriented adverbs. Rather, it simply readjusts the comparison class of the
adverb and let the adverb be located higher in the structure. This leaves room
for extending the analysis further to deal with evaluative adverbs briefly discussed in this section.
6 Conclusion
In this paper, I introduced the phenomenon of manner/clausal alternation with
particular adverbs in English and in Japanese. Among the previous analyses of
this phenomenon in English (Ernst 2002, McConnell-Ginet 1982, Piñón 2010),
none of them was readily adoptable for the Japanese data. Ernst’s (2002) analysis, which derives manner meanings from clausal meanings, was not suitable,
because in Japanese the clausal adverbs are morphologically complex (they
are the combination of manner adverbs and mo). McConnell-Ginet’s (1982)
analysis, which assumes the abstract verb act that is responsible for agentivity, was not suitable either, because clausal adverbs like orokani-mo ‘stupidly’
are not strictly agent-oriented adverbs but rather surface-subject(SS)-oriented
adverbs and furthermore can appear with apparently agent-less verbs such as
sinu ‘to die’. I proposed a compositional analysis that derives the SS-oriented
meaning from the combination of manner meaning and mo. In my analysis,
mo has a semantic effect (i.e. readjusting the comparison class of the adverb)
and a syntactic effect (i.e. forcing the adverb to be T0 -adjoined). This proposal
was supported by the fact that SS-oriented adverbs in Japanese, unlike agentoriented adverbs in English, do not have the agent-oriented reading in passives,
30
Ai Kubota
i.e., they are never passive sensitive. To further examine if this proposal is correct, I looked at another class of adverbs, namely evaluative adverbs, which
also involves the mo-attachment. I consulted two analyses, Sawada (1978)
and Potts (2005), on the contrast between manner adverbs and evaluative adverbs, and concluded that the proposal about mo is not incompatible with
them, although their main idea that manner adverbs and evaluative adverbs
make meaning contributions to different levels or dimensions of meaning is not
enough for explaining the semantic difference between the two adverbs.
This paper has three main contributions: (i) it captures parallel properties
between adverbs and adjectives by adopting the notion of comparison class, (ii)
it proposes a hybrid analysis of the previous studies (the notion of comparison
class from Ernst 2002 and the idea of deriving clausal adverbs from manner
adverbs in McConnell-Ginet 1982) so that it naturally explains a morphological fact in Japanese adverbs, and (iii) it accounts for the nature of SS-oriented
adverbs in Japanese that look like agent-oriented adverbs in English, and also
explains the phenomenon of manner/clausal alternation that is observed with
both SS-oriented and agent-oriented adverbs. From a cross-linguistic perspective, this paper sheds light on the uniformity and diversity of the classification
of adverbs across languages. For example, while there are some phenomena
that are cross-linguistically observed, such as manner/clausal alternation and
passive sensitivity, on the other hand, there are cross-linguistic differences:
while the manner/clausal alternation involves morphological marking (mo) in
Japanese, it is intonational marking (the comma intonation) in English. Furthermore, while clausal adverbs such as stupidly in English at first sight seem
to have equivalent adverbs in Japanese (orokani-mo), it turns out that such adverbs in Japanese are strictly surface-subject-orietend unlike the corresponding
adverbs in English. Since this paper focuses on the manner/clausal alternation of agent/SS-oriented adverbs, extending the analysis to other classes of
adverbs (e.g., evaluative adverbs) is left for future research.
Acknowledgements I would like to thank Thomas Ernst, Berit Gehrke, Yusuke Kubota,
Marcin Morzycki, the audiences at the Workshop on Modification (with & without modifiers), and an NLLT reviewer for extensive and helpful comments and discussion.
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