Who'd a thunk it?

[sagehen]

>>Do you also avoid "certainly", "probably", "regretfully",
>>"fortunately", "apparently", "evidently","luckily", "sadly",
>>"happily", and other sentence adverbs which similarly deflect the
>>role of the assessor?   Giving these up in favor of "I am certain",
>>"I think", "I regret", "it seems to me", etc. trades the
>>"mealy-mouthed" adverbs in for egocentric parentheticals...
>>
>>L
>~~~~~~~~
> With the poss exception of "regretfully," these aren't really parallels.
>"Regretably" would fit this list. These modifiers aren't acting quite the
>same as "hopefully" does in the disputed constructions...........
~~~~~~~~~
"Hopefully," "regretfully" & thankfully"  are all self-referential in ways
that most of the other adverbs brought up in this connection are not.
"Certainly," "probably," "apparently" &c., apply directly to the predicate
of the following clause, while "hopefully,"(&c) appears to apply to the
speaker, and as such looks an awful lot like the wrong part of speech for
the job.

In today's context, we might have a statement like this:
"Regretfully, Justice O'Connor has announced her resignation,&c.,"
which, on the face of it, says she does so with regrets of her own, but in
the kind of construction under discussion here, would mean I -- or the
world -- regret.

Clearly "hopefully" & its brethren used this way are here to stay & I
recognize them as Slang morphing into Standard, just feel they've been
awarded Standard status a bit early.

As for being mealy-mouthed, I'm a great mush eater, myself.
AM