piñón: from properties to manners: a historical line of thought about manner adverbs

abstract

Manner adverbs, although familiar, are puzzling, especially semantically. I trace a historical line of thought about how to treat them formally, beginning with Reichenbach in 1947 and continuing with Davidson, Bartsch, Dik, and McConnell-Ginet. While this is not the only line of thought about manner adverbs, it is arguably the most influential from the vantage point of 2008. Manner adverbs, like adverbs more generally, but perhaps more so than other categories, bring together issues of language and ontology. I conclude with a few remarks about Fodor's skeptical attitude towards manners.

reference

Studies van de Belgische Kring voor Linguïstiek – Travaux du Cercle Belge de Linguistique – Papers of the Linguistic Society of Belgium, volume 3, 2008.
URL <http://webh01.ua.ac.be/linguist/SBKL/sbkl2008/pin2008.pdf>

(See also http://webh01.ua.ac.be/linguist/SBKL/Vol3.htm for more information about volume 3.)

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Here is a local copy of the PDF file just in case the official URL for the volume is not working:

piñón: from properties to manners: a historical line of thought about manner adverbs
last updated on 20 may 2013
christopher piñón

http://pinon.sdf-eu.org/covers/pm.html