A Typology of Word Categoriesfeatures and as we have pointed out we cannot just introduce a new category into the
system without there being some fairly substantial consequences. If we introduce a
new feature to try to accommodate adverbs, we predict the existence of a further seven
more categories for which we have very little evidence.
However, -ly is strangely productive for a derivational morpheme, applying to
many adjectives, though there are exceptions:
(105) bigly
redly
*fastly
Yet we can explain many of these absent forms. For example, while the form fastly
does not exist, the form fast can be used as both an adjective and an adverb:
(106) a he rode a fast horse (adjective)
b the horse ran fast (adverb)
In many ways, then, this is like the missing plural sheeps or the missing past tense
putted (as past tense of put, not putt, which is putted). As such fast is just an irregular
adverb. In general, colour adjectives do not tend to form adverbs and the fact that this is
a semantically well-defined class of adjectives indicates that there might be semantic
reasons for it. This is further supported by the fact that colour adjectives that do form -ly
adverbs, such as blackly, do so only if they have meanings that go beyond reference to
the colour: blackly means ‘in a sinister or evil way’ and greenly can mean either
innocently or enviously. Admittedly, the absence of size adverbs like bigly and smally
is problematic given the existence of hugely and minutely. But putting this small number
of problematic cases to one side, we can see that the -ly morpheme is a very productive
one, applying to most adjectives. As pointed out above, most derivational morphemes,
being lexical in nature, are not productive and apply only to selected lexical items.
The alternative to viewing -ly as a derivational morpheme it to see it as an
inflectional morpheme. These are morphemes like the ones we have been mainly
concerned with so far. These apply to a lexical word to give back another form of the
same word. So see, sees, saw, seen and seeing are all forms of the same word, not
different words created from a single source as are depart, department, departmental,
departmentalisation. Inflectional morphemes on the whole are a lot more productive
than derivational morphemes (though we have seen a certain degree of irregularity and
exceptions in most of the morphemes we have investigated) and this would seem to fit
better the productive nature of -ly. However, in what sense can an adjective and its
related adverb be considered different forms of the same word, especially if they
belong to different categories? If -ly is an inflectional morpheme, it seems that we
would have to consider adjectives and adverbs to be the same category. There is a
certain amount of evidence in support of this view however. First, note that both
adjectives and adverbs have similar distributions, if we consider their immediate
environment:
(107) a very fond
b as quick as lightning
c too happy to notice
d so foolish that he believed me