Table 4: Semantic preference patterns of amplifiers in their dependent usage
| Amplifier | Positive | Neutral | Negative | Total |
| absolutely | 93 | 53 | 43 | 189 |
| completely | 127 | 112 | 244 | 483 |
| deeply | 31 | 53 | 91 | 175 |
| entirely | 76 | 48 | 71 | 195 |
| extremely | 268 | 156 | 262 | 686 |
| perfectly | 120 | 47 | 0 | 167 |
| totally | 87 | 61 | 187 | 335 |
| utterly | 26 | 14 | 92 | 132 |
| very | 326 | 259 | 302 | 887 |
Table 4 provides a tabular illustration of comparative ratios of semantic preferences of amplifiers in modern English dictionaries [37; 39; 42].
An element can be semantically positive, including affirmative, negative, or neutral. The semantic properties of the element following an amplifier are determined primarily locally, that is, by looking at the semantics of the collocate alone. Positive expressions in this paper include both favorable terms such as good, perfect, and beautiful, and affirmative terms such as right and correct (even when they are used to confirm a negative statement). Negative expressions are naturally the opposite of favorable and affirmative expressions, including such terms as ridiculous, horrible, and wrong. The terms without a clear positive or negative connotation are deemed neutral.
Sentences below exemplify positive semantic associations:
There are times when the calculator is an absolutely indispensable tool [39].
You know perfectly well what I mean [37].
I entirely agree with you [37].
It’s a totally awesome experience [42].
Lexical items such as indispensable, well, agree, and awesome convey a clear positive meaning.
Here are some examples which present cases of neutral terms – that is, neither positive, nor negative, as indicated the use of divided, different, identical and female respectively:
Opinion is deeply divided on this issue [42].
We are so utterly different from each other [42].
How do you tell them apart? They look absolutely identical [39].
The audience was almost entirely female [39].
Finally, negative cases (e.g., fail, disturbed, abhorrent, unacceptable, and destroy) are captured in the examples below:
She utterly failed to convince them [37].
They were deeply disturbed by the accident [37].
I find the idea absolutely abhorrent [39].
This behaviour is totally unacceptable [42].
The explosion completely destroyed the building [39].
The most ambiguous cases involve instances where amplifiers collocate with a negator (no, not) or a negative suffix (im-, un-, in-, etc.) These cases should be analyzed in the larger environment to determine whether the overall meaning is negative or positive. In the following cases a combination of amplifiers with unbelievable and nothing would be treated as positive and neutral respectively:
That’s on DVD compared to a VHS. It’s completely unbelievable [39].
She looks absolutely nothing like you [37].
On the other hand, when there is a syntactic negation modifying a positive adverb adjective sequence, that sequence may be considered, following the local principlementioned earlier, positive if the adjective is positive:
I am not entirely happy about the proposal [39].
In this case, the adjective happy is positive [42].
Overall, as the data in table 4 show, some amplifiers tend to collocate with positive meanings, whereas others have negative semantic preferences. More positive association patterns are found in the collocates of absolutely. The number of positive cases more than doubles that of negative cases. When positive and neutral cases are combined, negative cases become a decided minority. What especially reveals positive association is the case of perfectly. It exhibits a strong positive semantic preference, with frequent collocates being good, well, legitimate. There is a preferred correlation between totally, completely, utterly, deeply and semantically negative collocates. However, some amplifiers have almost equal number of semantically positive and negative collocates (entirely, very).
Conclusion
The categorical meaning of the adverb is secondary property which implies qualitative, quantitative, or circumstantial characteristics of actions, states or qualities. In accordance with their categorial meaning, adverbs are characterised by combinability with verbs, adjectives and words of adverbial nature. The functions of adverbs in these combinations consist in expressing different adverbial modifiers. Adverbs can also refer to whole situations.
The only pattern of morphological change for adverbs is the same as for adjectives, the degrees of comparison. With regard to the category of the degrees of comparison adverbs (like adjectives) fall into comparables and non-comparables. The number of non-comparables is much greater among adverbs than among adjectives. Only adverbs of manner and certain adverbs of time and place can form degrees of comparison.
In accord with their word-building structure adverbs may be simple, derived, compound and composite.Simple adverbs are rather few, and nearly all of them display functional semantics, mostly of pronominal character. The typical adverbial affixes in affixal derivation are, first and foremost, the basic and only productive adverbial suffix –ly and then a couple of others of limited distribution.
Adverbs may perform different functions, modifying different types of words, phrases, sentences. Adverbs may function asadverbial modifiers of manner, place, time, degree to a finite or non-finite form of the verb.
Falling back on the compiled list of relevant lexical units drawn from the currently existing dictionaries and miscellaneous theoretical sources, the paper offers a semantic classification of adverbs into 10 classes and lexico-grammatical classification into 3 classes.
Adverbs are commonly divided into qualitative, quantitative and circumstantial. Qualitative adverbs express immediate, inherently non-graded qualities of actions and other qualities. The adverbs considered as quantitative include words of degree. These are specific lexical units of semi-functional nature expressing quality measure, or gradational evaluation of qualities. The functional circumstantial adverbs are of pronominal nature.
According to their meaning, adverbs fall into the following classes: adverbs of time, adverbs of frequency, adverbs of place and direction, adverbs of manner, adverbs of degree or intensifiers, attitudinal adverbs, viewpoint adverbs, and conjunctive adverbs.
The results of research reveal that English adverbs realize their syntactic valent properties in 7 models of contact combinability and in 7 models of distant combinability. The nature of restrictions on combinability of adverbs in 14 models of distant combinability in some cases is conditioned by relations of objects and phenomena of extralinguistic reality, in other cases it is conditioned by the system of the language, namely, by the distribution of adverbs which either favours or impedes the realization of their valent properties [12]. Morphological characteristics of adverbs and their collocates are either conducive or non-conducive or neutral to the adverb realizing its syntactic valency. Thus, adverbs of manner saying how an action is performed can freely occur with dynamic verbs, but not with stative verbs.
The meaning of models of combinability of English adverbs with other notional units is determined by semantic relations which occur in the process of their interaction.
One of the most syntagmatically active groups of adverbs is the adverbs of degree or intensifiers. The analysis leads to conclude that the more delexicalised an intensifier, the more widely it collocates: the greater the range and number of modifiers it combines with. In other words, the less meaning is contained within the intensifier itself, the more it will acquire from its surrounding co-text. Some degree adverbs tend to be distinguished in terms of positive, neutral or negative attitude.
Резюме
Дипломна робота присвячена дослідженню синтагматичних та парадигматичних особливостей прислівників у сучасній англійській мові.
У роботі розглянуто питання функціональних особливостей прислівників: від з’ясування насамперед валентних функцій до дослідження їхнього семантичного простору. Проте суто одноплановий, синтагматичний підхід до сутності й функціонування прислівників без аналізу їхнього парадигматичного статусу не дає можливості виявити усі закономірності їхнього функціонування. Тому дане дослідження включає також і аналіз парадигматики англійських прислівників. Це дає можливість пояснити не лише вживання прислівників у контексті, але й іманентну семантичну ознаку прислівника як елемента лексико-семантичної системи. У роботі проаналізовано дериваційний статус та дериваційні тенденції прислівників.
Для вирішення поставлених завдань використовувались такі методи:
- дистрибутивний і валентний аналіз;
- структурно-семантичний аналіз;
- елементи кількісного аналізу.
Основну увагу дослідження зосереджено на прислівниках ступеня, оскільки цьому виду прислівників характерна найбільш висока синтагматична активність. Деякі прислівники ступеня розглядаються з точки зору позитивних або негативних семантичних преференцій. Дана робота містить аналіз семантичних преференцій прислівників ступеня на матеріалі словосполучень, що були вилучені методом суцільної вибірки з трьох сучасних англійських словників сполучуваності.
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Appendix