chapter 2 stance adverbs qualifying a standpoint - LOT publications

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CHAPTER 2
propositions at the same time, one asserting the embedded proposition and
another asserting a proposition that contains the adjective from which the
evaluative adverb derives:
Unfortunately, Clark Kent is Superman
a. Clark Kent is Superman
b. That Clark Kent is Superman is unfortunate
Evaluatives unlike the so-called illocutionary adverbs do not add a comment to
the speech act that is performed by means of asserting the proposition in the
sentence but rather add a comment to the event or state of affairs that is
described in the utterance. Nevertheless, the comment that evaluatives add to
the content of the utterance does not contribute directly to the truthconditional
status of the utterance, unlike the case with modal adverbs (see
2.3.1.2 above). A number of accounts have been proposed in order to explore
how evaluative adverbs contribute to the meaning of the utterance.
Bach (1999) agrees with Bellert (1977) that utterances containing an
evaluative adverb express two propositions, “the proposition expressed by the
matrix sentence and the proposition that the fact stated by that proposition has
the property expressed by the assessive [=evaluative]” (p. 359). He contrasts
utterances containing such adverbs with those containing modal adverbs like
certainly saying that the latter express only one proposition. Somehow
confusingly, though, he includes in his list of adverbs, which he labels
„assessives‟, and which he considers to be content-modifiers not utterancemodifiers,
adverbs like obviously, of course, and undoubtedly next to adverbs like
amazingly, coincidentally, disappointingly, (un)expectedly, (un)fortunately, incredibly,
inevitably, ironically, luckily, naturally, oddly, predictably, regrettably, sadly, surprisingly. He
maintains that these adverbs can occur within the subordinate that-clause of an
indirect quotation and thereby contribute to the specification of what is said,
unlike utterance-modifiers, which cannot. 45
Jayez and Rossari (2004) remark that evaluative adverbs are puzzling as far
as their contribution to the meaning of an utterance is concerned, because they
seem to “interact with the assertive force of the sentence in which they occur”,
while at the same time they are not part of what is said. They conclude that
evaluative adverbs trigger conventional implicatures since they are not part of
what is said and they fail the tests that detect presuppositions. The authors
suggest that the same status of conventional implicatures is shared by other
parentheticals as well, namely connectives and the so-called illocutionary
adverbs (see also Bonami et al., 2004).
Ifantidou (2001), who works within the framework of Relevance Theory,
observes that evaluatives contribute to the level of higher-explicatures in the
45 Bach‟s list of „utterance modifiers‟ includes adverbs like confidentially, metaphorically, and truthfully,
which I discuss in the next section under „illocutionary adverbs‟. Interestingly, the prototypical
illocutionary adverb frankly is missing from his list.