passive-sensitive adverbs

Andrea Sanso' sanso at ling.unipi.it
Mon Oct 18 16:35:31 UTC 1999


Dear linguists,

I have the following question for a native english speaker: some adverbs
are claimed to be passive-sensitive (cf. McConnellGinet "Adverbs and
Logical Form" Language 1982), thus allowing two readings when
sentence-initial as in:

(1) Reluctantly, Mary was instructed by John

I was wondering which is the preferred interpretation in the three
following cases (i.e. which of the two participants is interpreted to be
reluctant):

(2) Reluctantly, an actor was instructed
(3) Reluctantly, an actor was instructed by the director
(4) Reluctantly, an old actor was instructed by a young one

Best

Andrea Sanso'



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