190
I/You Admit and Admittedly
matrix clause – and not the adverbial structure as I/ you admit – provides the
only plausible source construction. While this single case study is interesting
in and of itself, it raises more general questions about the relation of disjunct
adverbials and performative verbs. If we consider the seven most frequent dis-
junct adverbials formed by verbs in English, repeatedly , reportedly , allegedly ,
supposedly , undoubtedly , unexpectedly , decidedly ( admittedly is the eighth
most frequent),^21 we fi nd that some correspond to performative verbs ( report ,
allege , decide ) but others do not, some may occur in the it BE Adj that con-
struction ( reported , alleged , decided , ?supposed ) and some may not, some of
the verbs may be used in fi rst- person epistemic parentheticals ( I suppose , I
doubt , I expect ) whereas others cannot, and some of the adverbs are common
as subjuncts ( supposedly , allegedly , decidedly , unexpectedly )^22 while others
are not. The one case study given here thus points to the need for more detailed
historical studies of the numerous epistemic parentheticals and disjunct adver-
bials in English in order to come to a full understanding of the mechanisms
involved in their development and the relationship between epistemicity and
performativity. The disjunct and subjunct uses of certain adverbials (which
are not always clearly distinguished in dictionaries) also call for further study.
21 These were identifi ed by using the search string * edly.
22 Searching for the _ Adj in COCA yielded 308 examples of supposedly , 140 examples of
allegedly , 90 examples of decidedly , and 60 examples of unexpectedly , but only a handful of
examples of the other forms (searched April 10, 2016).