prescriptivism, conventions, irony, and could(n't) care less

[Lynne Murphy]

--On Wednesday, January 31, 2001 9:30 am +0800 Laurence Horn
<laurence.horn at YALE.EDU> wrote:

> At 2:04 PM +0000 1/31/01, Lynne Murphy wrote:
>>  the pattern of
>> adj-to-adv is not so widespread as one of my more American-disparaging
>> acquaintances would have it--I can't imagine anyone saying "I can't come,
>> unfortunate."
>>
> only for manner (or VP?) adverbs but not sentence adverbs?

Well, "I cried sad" sounds undoable to me (or "I sad cried"), and I would
take the 'sad' there to be a manner adverb for 'cry' (there is a S-adv
interpretation, of course, but neither sounds likely to me).  But I suppose
someone who has fewer 'ly's than me would be a better judge.

Lynnely


M Lynne Murphy
Lecturer in Linguistics
School of Cognitive and Computing Sciences
University of Sussex
Brighton BN1 9QH
UK

phone +44-(0)1273-678844
fax   +44-(0)1273-671320