Adverbs of Causation

Abstract

Some logicians, and some linguists, too, have appeared to disparage word-semantics, or at least have described it as lexicography rather than semantics.¹ It should be obvious, however, that even if one’s aim is the construction of a general framework for semantic theory, such a framework can only be justified if it can be applied to actual sentences of natural language; and that means to actual words of natural language. In some cases it is unnecessary to consider more than a few words in a given class. for instance, if we have an adequate semantics for Arebella we should not expect to have to agonize over Bramwell, Catherine, Dean, Evangeline, Fred, Guinevere, Howard, Isolde, Jeremy, Kiri, Ludwig, Miriam, Nathaniel, Olga, Percival, Quilla, Ralf, Stephanie, Trevor, Ursula, Vernon, Wilhelmina, Xerxes, Yvonne, or Zane. But one class of words where it does seem necessary to consider many examples is the class of adverbs. Maybe this shows that adverbs do not form a genuine semantic class, but if so, then that gives even more reason for looking at many examples. Semantically, and also syntactically, as far as I can judge, adverbs seem the least understood large class of words in natural language. There have been few studies of their semantics at all, and those that there have been are at least superficially pretty divergent.²