chapter 2 stance adverbs qualifying a standpoint - LOT publications

46
CHAPTER 2
them under „adjuncts‟, too, more specifically under „clause-oriented adjuncts‟.
In various studies from the fields of pragmatics and semantics these words also
appear as „pragmatic markers‟ (Fraser 1996), and „sentence adverbials‟ (Bartsch,
1976; Koktova, 1986). Other labels include „sentence markers‟, „sentence
modifiers‟ and „sentential adverbs‟. The common denominator that brings all
these adverbs together is that in syntactic terms they occupy the most
peripheral position in the clause and that in semantic terms they “characterize
how the propositional content of the clause relates to the world or the
context”, as Huddleston and Pullum (2002, p. 576) put it.
As Biber et al. (1999) remark, the use of stance adverbs is much less
common than the use of circumstance and linking adverbs: “In fact, most
sentences in English do not contain stance adverbs. Rather they are statements
made without overt stance markers” (p. 853). Of the four registers that Biber et
al. have studied and from which they have drawn their examples (conversation,
fiction, news, and academic discourse), stance adverbs appear more frequently
in conversation. Here is how the authors explain this:
Speakers use stance adverbs to convey their judgments and attitudes, to
claim the factual nature of what they are saying, and to mark exactly
how they mean their utterances to be understood. (1999, pp. 766-767)
Stance adverbs are relatively common in academic prose, while they have the
lowest frequency in news.
Single word adverbs constitute the most frequent and diversified
realization of stance adverbials – at least as far as the English language is
concerned. 27 According to Biber et al. (1999), “prepositional phrases and finite
clauses each account for about 15-20% of stance adverbials” (p. 768). Finite
clauses are the second most common structural form of stance adverbials in
conversation and fiction. Prepositional phrases are the second most common
form in news and academic prose. Other constructions used to convey stance
include: nouns, modal auxiliaries and main verbs, as well as paralinguistic
features such as prosody and loudness.
Biber et al. (1999) distinguish three main types of stance adverbs, based on
semantic and pragmatic criteria, namely: epistemic adverbs, attitude adverbs
and style adverbs. The first group is subdivided in sub-groups as Table 1
shows. 28 Epistemic stance adverbs focus on the truth-value of the proposition
commenting on factors such as certainty, reality, sources, limitations, and
27 A distinction is made in the literature between the terms „adverb‟ and „adverbial‟. „Adverb‟
refers to the part of speech that modifies a verb, adjective or another adverb. „Adverbial‟ refers to
words, phrases or clauses that function as adverbs. In this study, I focus on single word stance
adverbs and use the term „stance adverbs‟ throughout.
28 Table 1 includes a selection of the stance adverbials that appear in Biber et al‟s (1999) relevant
chapter as well as in the examples and in the indicative lists of stance adverbials provided in other
sections of the grammar.