Form follows functions

[Louise McNally]

En/Na tibor at linguistics.ruhr-uni-bochum.de ha escrit:
>
> Hi,
>
> how that I am getting replies where 'form follows function', I dare ask
> another question:
>
> Where can I insert an adverb between a series of auxiliaries in English,
> i.e.
>
> (1) John has often been asking strange questions.
> (2) John has been often asking strange questions.
> (3) John often has been asking strange questions

In my opinion, this question has a short answer and a long answer.
The short answer is that, at least in my English, there is some
adverb that will work in each of the positions in (1)-(3).
For example, although I don't like (2) at all, I like it
rather better when you change the adverb to "recently"
(it sounds almost perfect with "repeatedly", but I think that's because
"repeatedly" is probably a VP adverb rather than a sentence adverb,
and is thus more likely to form a VP with "asking...").  And
while I don't like (3) much either, it sounds
much better when the adverb is changed to e.g. "probably", and I
would dare say it's impeccable in:

(4)  I prefer to spend my time thinking about conjunctions,
but I nevertheless have been wondering about sentence adverbs.

I don't have the long answer to the question (if anyone does,
or knows where it is, I'd appreciate your pointing me to it),
but you can imagine what it should be:  an answer that explains
why the different adverbs within a what you might call the
"sentence" adverb category (modal adverbs, cuantificational
adverbs, temporal adverbs, what Greenbaum and Quirk call
"conjuncts", etc.) have the positional preferences (or possibilities)
that they do.

Louise McNally

--
Louise McNally
Dept. Traducció i Filologia, Universitat Pompeu Fabra
La Rambla, 30-32, E-08002 Barcelona
Tel: +34-93-5422248/FAX: +34-93-5421617
mcnally at upf.es / http://www.upf.es/dtf/personal/louisemcnally