Orientierte Adverbien : Zur lexikalischen Semantik von Ereignisadverbien

Abstract

In event semantics, manner adverbs are analysed as 'predicates of events'. However, many such event predicates have variants that apply to individuals instead of events; e.g. : 'to answer the question stupidly' vs. 'a stupid person'. The thesis investigates the question of how these pervasive and systematic alternations can be explained, and in doing so aims at supplementing the neo-Davidsonian theory of adverbial modification with a lexical-semantic account of the modifiers. One and the same underlying adjective usually gives rise to a whole range of different adverbial uses. The exact range of variants is found to be conditioned by the lexical-semantic class of the adjective. Hence, a second topic dealt with in detail is the identification and semantic analysis of a number of 'borderline' adverb types which are different from manner adverbs but still raise the question of whether they might be event-related. After an introduction that motivates the general approach, chapter 2 discusses various theoretical issues concerning the lexical status of adverbs. Chapter 3 introduces the class of resultative adverbs and argues that they constitute a kind of event-related modifier that arises via lexical shift from a predicate of individuals. Chapter 4 discusses individual-level adjectives like 'stupid' and their adverbial uses, namely manner and agentive (or subject-oriented) adverbs. A major finding is that the manner variant is lexically derived from the agentive one. Chapter 5 investigates adjectives of psychological states like 'sad' and their adverbial uses: manner and transparent adverbs. It is shown that, lexically, transparent adverbs are predicates of individuals that are related to events only in the course of composition, thus exhibiting close similarities to depictives. Finally, chapter 6 summarises the findings.

In event semantics, manner adverbs are analysed as 'predicates of events'. However, many such event predicates have variants that apply to individuals instead of events; e.g. : 'to answer the question stupidly' vs. 'a stupid person'. The thesis investigates the question of how these pervasive and systematic alternations can be explained, and in doing so aims at supplementing the neo-Davidsonian theory of adverbial modification with a lexical-semantic account of the modifiers. One and the same underlying adjective usually gives rise to a whole range of different adverbial uses. The exact range of variants is found to be conditioned by the lexical-semantic class of the adjective. Hence, a second topic dealt with in detail is the identification and semantic analysis of a number of 'borderline' adverb types which are different from manner adverbs but still raise the question of whether they might be event-related. After an introduction that motivates the general approach, chapter 2 discusses various theoretical issues concerning the lexical status of adverbs. Chapter 3 introduces the class of resultative adverbs and argues that they constitute a kind of event-related modifier that arises via lexical shift from a predicate of individuals. Chapter 4 discusses individual-level adjectives like 'stupid' and their adverbial uses, namely manner and agentive (or subject-oriented) adverbs. A major finding is that the manner variant is lexically derived from the agentive one. Chapter 5 investigates adjectives of psychological states like 'sad' and their adverbial uses: manner and transparent adverbs. It is shown that, lexically, transparent adverbs are predicates of individuals that are related to events only in the course of composition, thus exhibiting close similarities to depictives. Finally, chapter 6 summarises the findings.