176
I/You Admit and Admittedly
(5) (see Greenbaum 1969 : 95, 225; Quirk et al. 1985 : 623; Swan 1988a : 9– 10,
1991 : 420– 421):
(5) It is Adj/ Part that S
That S is Adj/ Part
I V that S
For example, Swan ( 1988b : 42) notes that many modal adverbs are deverbal
and are “better seen as corresponding to various performative or other verbal
constructions,” citing the equivalence of Admittedly John never did seem ter-
ribly bright to I admit that John never did seem terribly bright.
The equation of the structures in (5) with disjunct adverbials presents problems
of predictability, or “quasi- transformationality,” however. Not all It is Adj/ Part
that S structures yield sentence adverbials (Greenbaum 1969 : 225) (see 6a). Not
all sentence adverbials correspond to clausal structures (Greenbaum 1969 : 110;
Swan 1991 : 421) (see 6b). And some but not all sentence adverbials derive from
infi nitival structures, while others do not (Quirk et al. 1985 : 623) (see 6c).
(6) a. It is acknowledged that S > Acknowledgedly S.
b. Really/ seemingly/ technically S > It is real/ seeming/ technical that S >
c. It was foolish of John to go > Foolishly, John went
*It was certain of John to go > Certainly, John went
Jackendoff postulates that the paraphrases needed would be “hopelessly varied”
(1972: 57– 58), including non- clausal structures such as prepositional phrases
( in my opinion ), participles ( taking this into consideration ), and infi nitives ( to
tell the truth ). For speech act adverbials such as admittedly or avowedly , for
example, Simon- Vandenbergen and Aijmer ( 2007 191) postulate a paraphrase
with a modal auxiliary, either ‘it can/ must be V- ed that’ or ‘it cannot be V- ed that.’
Furthermore, in respect to subjectivity , the clausal paraphrases and adverbials
differ, ranging from most subjective ( I V that S) to somewhat less subjective (Adv
S) to most objective ( It is Adj/ Part that S). Explicit denial is possible with the more
objective it - clause but not with the more personal disjunct adverbial: {It is prob-
able that,?Probably} the hare will win the race, but somehow I think the tortoise
actually will (Hanson 1987 : 135). And the paraphrase with a fi rst- person subject is
more subjective than the adverbial: “ Admittedly suggests that what is said would
be regarded by anyone as an admission whereas I admit shows only the way that
the statement is to be regarded here [i.e., by the speaker]” (Urmson 1952 : 487).
Similar to the process of slifting (Ross 1973 ) or complement preposing
(Hooper 1975 ) (see Section 1.4.1.2 ), it has been argued that disjunct adverbi-
als^9 derive transformationally from manner adverbs in a deleted higher per-
formative clause (see Schreiber 1972 ) – the so- called “performative analysis”:
9 The argument typically applies to style disjuncts (such as frankly ) rather than content disjuncts
(such as really ) (on this distinction, see Quirk et al. 1985 : 615).