Languages & Linguistics
Adverbials of Frequency
Adverbials of frequency are words or phrases that indicate how often an action occurs. They provide information about the frequency of an event or action, such as "always," "often," "sometimes," "rarely," or "never." In linguistics, adverbials of frequency are important for understanding how often certain actions or events occur within a given context.
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3 Key excerpts on "Adverbials of Frequency"
eBook - ePub- Wolfgang Klein(Author)
- 2013(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
occasionally, regularly, often, etc. As we shall see in section 10.4 , this difference plays an important role for their interaction with durational adverbials.5 Another difference is the observable meaning difference of adverbials such as once according to their position:(28) - I met him once.
- Once, I met him.
Is the difference just a consequence of the different interaction with the remainder of the sentence, or is it due to an internal lexical ambiguity of once? Again, we shall try to answer this question below in the more general context of the relation between temporal Adverbials of Frequency (TADV-Q) and TT-attachment.10.3.1 Frequency of what?TADV-Q specify the frequency of something. What is this ‘something’? We shall follow here the lines suggested in section 10.2.3 and assume that in principle, TADV-Q behave on a par with TADV-D: they lexically specify the frequency of the time spans to which a given lexical content is associated. This lexical content varies, and does so in two respects. First, we have the usual distinction in 0-state, 1-state, and 2-state contents. Second, lexical contents can be compound, as in He often called three times per day for more than an hour. In this case, several TSits are embedded in each other. Let us begin with the first distinction.0-state contents For obvious reasons, 0-state contents allow no TADV-Q: a book, once in Russian, is forever in Russian, hence it is impossible to have, say, three such time spans on the time axis. But now compare(29) - *A book was three times in Russian.
- Three times, a book was in Russian.
Only (29a) is excluded; (29b) is possible in a context in which, for example, a library is checked for books which are not in English. In this case, three different TSits are possible, all of them based on the same lexical content <a book be in Russian>: the time of book a’s being in Russian, the time of book b’s being in Russian, the time of book c’s being in Russian. Therefore, it makes sense to speak of three ‘times of situation’, independent of the question that these three time spans may be the same AS FOR THEIR PURELY TEMPORAL PROPERTIES
eBook - PDF- William D. Davies(Author)
- 2010(Publication Date)
- De Gruyter Mouton(Publisher)
Chapter 12 Adverbs and adverbial clauses Adverbial expressions elaborate information regarding the state of affairs expressed by the verb and its arguments, information such as temporality, frequency, manner, purpose, instrumentality, and so on. This chapter details lexical, phrasal, and clausal adverbial expressions. 1. Types of adverbial expressions Few lexical items exist that one can unequivocally identify as adverb roots. However, there are many nouns and adjectives that function adverbially and there are some derived lexical items that function adverbially. These include temporal, frequency, epistemic, manner, and degree expressions. 1.1. Temporal expressions Expressions of time are largely nominal and adjectival. Nominal expressions include: nouns denoting time of day, e.g. laggu ‘ morning ’ , seyang ‘ midday ’ , malem ‘ night ’ , nouns denoting specific days, e.g. ba'ari' ‘ yesterday ’ , laggu' ‘ tomor-row ’ , dhaggu' ‘ tomorrow ’ , nouns denoting periods of time, e.g. jam ‘ hour ’ , are ‘ day ’ , bulan ‘ month ’ , taon ‘ year ’ , names of days of the week, e.g., are Minggu ‘ Sunday ’ , are Salasa ‘ Tuesday ’ , names of months and years, e.g. bulan Juni ‘ June ’ , bulan Augustus ‘ August ’ , taon sa'ebu sangatos sabidak lema' ‘ 1965 ’ , taon dhu'ebu set-tong ‘ 2001 ’ , and specific times and dates, e.g., kol lema' ‘ five o ’ clock ’ , tangal tello polo Juni dhu'ebu ballu' ‘ 30 June 2008 ’ Examples of these are given in (1-3). 390 Chapter 12 Adverbs and adverbial clauses (1) Daddi baji' gella', e-soso-we kerbuy pote pan-brampan are so baby before OV -milk-LOC buffalo white RED -how.many day dha' iya iya like.this yes ‘ So the baby was nursed by the albino buffalo for several days like this. ’ (2) Engko' malem-ma a-mempe se ne-banne . I night-DEF AV -dream REL RED -no ‘ Last night I dreamed something weird. ’ (3) Taon sa'ebu sangangngatos sabidak ennem koca'-eng mo'dul pole . year 1000 900 60 6 say-DEF show.up again ‘ In 1966 they say it appeared again.
eBook - PDF- Mairi Blackings, Nigel Fabb(Authors)
- 2011(Publication Date)
- De Gruyter Mouton(Publisher)
Chapter 18 Adverbiale We use the term 'adverbial' to group words (and lexicalized phrases and clauses) by function. In this chapter we separate kinds of adverbials, into sections depending on their syntactic behaviour; we have not found clear correlations between syntactic and semantic characteristics of the different kinds of adverbial. Adverbials can be freely placed in the clause, fixed in final position or fixed in initial position. We separately consider temporal nouns, subordinate clauses functioning as adverbials, and adverbials which have a discourse function rather than a syntactic role. 18.1 Freely placed adverbials Freely placed adverbials express a range of meanings including location in time and fixing the temporal reference point, modality and negation, hearsay, contrast, etc. The adverbials and their meanings are listed in Table 45. Freely placed adverbials can appear at the beginning of the sentence or at the end of the sentence or between almost any pair of sentence-level constituents. This is illustrated in the following examples, where @ indicates positions where the adverbials in question can appear. (1) @ p-ogù @ opi ?a gán @ jü ?1 @ 2S -steal Opi POSS bicycle 2S FOC @ = o/o 'it is said' 'It is said that you were the one who stole Opi's bicycle.' (2) @ ö-cfi id @ Spi ni @ ni @ 3-kill PL Opi PR FOC @ = ama 'allegedly' 'Allegedly, they were the ones who killed Opi.' (3) @ Spi m @ ògu @ Opi PR thief @ = tfàn 'by the way' or 'you know' 'Opi is, by the way, a thief.' or 'Opi is, you know, a thief.' (4) @ opi @ ê-mu @ ra @ Opi (3)-VE-go AFF @ = w 'still' 'Opi definitely came (in spite of everything).' 476 Adverbials The placement of freely placed adverbials at the end of the sentence is worth commenting on. As the above sentences show, the adverbial can either precede or follow a focus particle or focused constituent. The adverbials can usually follow negation only if they are focused by the LOW-?? strategy.
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