Abstract:
Dictionaries tend to define the English adverbs literally, totally, and wholly with respect to each other, thus failing to distinguish their nuances. Although adverbs are well known for their complex functional and syntactic usage patterns, there is no published research which adequately differentiates the set considered here. In order to further distinguish how they differ in actual usage, a contrastive analysis based on corpus data and using a Behavioral Profile Analysis approach (Liu and Espino, 2012) was carried out. The data is drawn from varied registers/genres within the Corpus of Contemporary American English for the contexts of use of the adverbs, their common collocates (words they co-occur with frequently), and their position and function within sentences. Substitutability patterns among the adverbs and any resulting changes in nuance are examined. Given recently observed changes in the uses of literally, totally, and wholly in American conversation, these changes were tracked using the Corpus of Historical American English. Finally, frequency of use in the registers/genres was calculated. Taken together, these analytical components yield a clearer, less vague account of the similarities and differences in meaning and use across the adverbs within the English language system.
