Positions ‘F’ and ‘O’

Time and spatial adverbs typically come at the end of a clause. And many non-time, non-spatial sentential adverbs may occur in what I call the clause-final position, F. A single-word sentential adverb (not referring to space or time) can be placed immediately after verb (plus object, if there is one) or in between or after time and/or spatial specifications. For example, sensibly in its sentential function can be at position A or at any of F1, F2, or F3 in (27).

(27) Mary [A] completed her tax return [,F1,] (in April) [,F2,] (in New York) [,F3]

The scope of sensibly in one of the F positions extends over all that precedes. For example, if sensibly is placed at F1, we get Mary completed her tax return, sensibly, in April in New York; this states that in completing her tax return Mary behaved sensibly, and that it was done in April in New York, these two additional pieces of information being irrelevant for the judgement of sensibleness. However Mary completed her tax return in April in New York, sensibly implies that it was sensible for her to do it in April (when her accountant was available) and in New York (where she keeps all her financial records). Note that comma intonation is usual for any of the three F positions.

Turning now to manner adverbs, these can occur in position V, which is immediately before the verb, or in position O, which is immediately after verb-plus-object, as in:

Now, I mentioned that English has a number of transitive verbs which include an inherent preposition; these include rely on, hope for, refer to and decide on; a two-word unit such as decide on behaves in many ways like a one-word lexeme such as choose. Now consider where the complex manner adverb most carefully can occur in the sentence They decided on a new chairperson:

The manner adverb can felicitously be placed between decide and on a new chairperson. The less preferred—but still perfectly acceptable—position is after a new chairperson. That is, with a two-word verb, the adverb can come between the components or it can follow the whole-verb-plus-object, as variants of position O.

Whereas an adverb is scarcely ever found between a verb and a following NP in O function, it may come between a verb and a complement clause in O function. Indeed, the for from a FOR TO complement clause must be retained after an adverb (although it could—or must—be omitted when there is no adverb present); for example, I want (very much for) Mary to give me an apple.

We can examine the O position of a manner adverb with respect to a spatial adverb. Consider the placement of adverb proudly in My uncle marched in the ex-servicemen’s procession:

There is a subtle difference between (30b) and (30c). Using proudly in position O1, in (30b), simply states that my uncle marched proudly (maybe he always does). On the other hand, (30c), with the adverb in position O2, implies that what he did in a proud way was march-in-the-ex-servicemen’s-procession, probably because he greatly values being an ex-serviceman. That is, the adverb has scope over all that precedes.

A verb-plus-adverb can give rise to an adjectival derivation; from organize plus well we get well-organized, as in a well-organized event. It is important to distinguish between such a derived expression and a passive construction. Consider:

(31a) John *V organized the event O

Manner adverbs such as well, badly and differently only occur at position O, never at V. Now let us look at the passive of (31a):

(31b) The event was organized O (by John)

Sentence (31b) is a derived intransitive construction, with was organized as the predicate, involving was (be plus past tense) as marker of the passive construction. A manner adverb such as well may only occur at position O, after the verb.

This is quite different from:

(32) The event was [well organized]

This is a copula construction with was as the copula verb and the adjectival phrase well organized as copula complement.