Webster's on Sentence Adverbs
Donald C Hubin
acrimonious (On the NET?! Unheard of!) discussion of 'hopefully'
used as a sentence adverb. Rather than continue in the current
vein, I propose that we consider sentence adverbs generally.
These are useful little devils, I think. Still, some sentence
adverbs introduce syntactic ambiguity. While the ambiguity is,
I believe, usually eliminated by semantic and pragmatic consider-
ations, in some cases it remains. So it seems to me that there
is a trade off between expository convenience and eliminating
potential ambiguity. I think that reasonable people decide this
issue differently. I introduce the following discussion of
sentence adverbs in part to set a context for the discussion of
'hopefully' used in this way, and in part to note the usefulness
of sentence adverbs generally.
The following is from _Webster's_Dictionary_of_English_Usage_,
(Springfield, Massachusetts: Mirriam-Webster Inc.) 1989. This
is quoted without permission. It is my understanding that this
sort of use is consistent with the "fair use" doctrine of
copyright laws. (Only a small fraction of the work is quoted, it
is properly cited, it is for educational purposes, it is not for
profit and it is unlikely to affect adversely sales of the
copyright holder's product.) If I am wrong about this, I have no
doubt that I will be harshly and quickly set straight by the
collective wisdom of the NET.
=================================================================
SENTENCE ADVERB The sentence adverb is an adverb or adverbial
phrase that is connected with a whole sentence rather then with a
single word or phrase in the sentence. Sentence adverbs are a
common feature of present-day English, and they go by many names.
You will find them called *dangling adverbs*, *floating adverbs*,
*adverbial disjuncts*, and probably other things as well.
The chief virtue of the sentence adverb is its compactness:
It permits the writer or speaker to express in a single word or
short phrase what would otherwise take a much longer form.
Consider this example:
Luckily I never mentioned having asked --Henry Adams,
letter, 23 Nov. 1859
That one *luckily* replaces some longer expression like "It's
lucky for me that. . . ." Here is another one:
Strictly, when *because of* is right, *due to* is wrong
--Johnson 1982
*Strictly* could be replaced here by the popular *strictly
speaking*, but that too is a variety of sentence adverb. If the
adverb were not available, it would be necessary to write
something like "From the standpoint of strict grammatical
correctness. . . ." So you can see the appeal of the sentence
adverb. Here are a couple more for you to try paraphrasing:
Basically, you make an inference if you derive
something unstated by using your ability to reason --
Bailey 1984
Phenomenologically, youth is a time of alternating
estrangement and omnipotentiality --Kenneth Keniston,
*American Scholar*, Autumn 1970
Some handbooks point out that conjunctive adverbs like
*therefore*, *nevertheless*, and *however* can also be considered
sentence adverbs because to the extent they are adverbial they
modify clauses rather than any particular part of the clause.
One of the common uses of the sentence adverb is to express
an attitude of the writer or speaker:
Clearly we have found that violence is no answer --W.E.
Brock, *AAUP Bulletin*, September 1969
Strangely, people who write and think like that insist
that they are champions of what they have named
"humanistic" education --Mitchell 1979
Hopefully, The Bluebird, when it is finished, will turn
out to be a bluebird and not a turkey --Art Evans,
*Edmonton Jour.*, 22 May 1975
Curiously enough, I met Hartman for the first time last
night --H. L. Menken, letter, 24 Oct. 1924
Luckily the strength of the piece did not depend upon
him --Jane Austen, *Mansfield Park*, 1814
Oddly, though, over the years *scan* also has developed
an opposite meaning --Michael Gartner, *Advertising
Age*, 17 Oct. 1985
Amusingly, they had widely divergent attitudes toward
corrections in their copy --Simon 1980
A great many of the adverbs used as attitudinal sentence
adverbs are also used as adverbs of manner, as *frankly* is used
here:
He frankly admits his fondness for the wealth and fame
--*Current Biography, December 1965
This duality of function is one of the reasons advanced by
commentators in objection to a few specific sentence adverbs (in
particular, *hopefully*, which see). They also purport not to
understand who is expressing the attitude, although in almost
every instance it is perfectly plain that it is the writer or
speaker.
Note that sentence-modifying adverbs do not necessarily
stand first in a sentence:
This is one of the words that turn up, predictably, in
the sports pages --Harper 1985
When Isaac Newton sat under a tree in the 17th century
and was famously struck by a falling apple --Martin
Hollis, *Invitation to Philosophy*, 1985
Matters complicate, unsurprisingly --Stanley Kauffmann,
*Before My Eyes*, 1980
====================================================================
Again, the above material was quoted without permission from
_Webster's_Dictionary_of_English_Usage_, (Springfield, MA:
Mirriam-Webster) 1989.
--
Donald C. Hubin | Depart. of Philosophy, The Ohio State University
| Columbus, OH 43210 USA (614)292-7914
-----------------+---------------------------------------------------------
hub...@osu.edu | or hub...@ohstmail.bitnet
Gary Merrill
In article <1992Apr3.1...@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu>, dhu...@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu (Donald C Hubin) writes:
[ much good and interesting stuff omitted]
|>
|> One of the common uses of the sentence adverb is to express
|> an attitude of the writer or speaker:
|>
|> Clearly we have found that violence is no answer --W.E.
|> Brock, *AAUP Bulletin*, September 1969
|>
|> Strangely, people who write and think like that insist
|> that they are champions of what they have named
|> "humanistic" education --Mitchell 1979
|>
|> Hopefully, The Bluebird, when it is finished, will turn
|> out to be a bluebird and not a turkey --Art Evans,
|> *Edmonton Jour.*, 22 May 1975
|>
|> Curiously enough, I met Hartman for the first time last
|> night --H. L. Menken, letter, 24 Oct. 1924
|>
|> Luckily the strength of the piece did not depend upon
|> him --Jane Austen, *Mansfield Park*, 1814
|>
|> Oddly, though, over the years *scan* also has developed
|> an opposite meaning --Michael Gartner, *Advertising
|> Age*, 17 Oct. 1985
|>
|> Amusingly, they had widely divergent attitudes toward
|> corrections in their copy --Simon 1980
This collection of examples illustrates quite nicely exactly what
I find grating about the use of "hopefully" as a sentence adverb.
Notice that in all cases *except* "hopefully" there is a straight-
forward transformation that can take place:
x_ly S ----> It is x that S
To wit:
Clearly we have found that ...
It is clear that we have found that ...
Luckily the strength of the piece ...
It is lucky that the strength of the piece ...
etc. (The "curiously enough" case shows that the transformation is
not so simple in some cases, but you get the idea.)
However, in the case of "hopefuly", we would get
It is hopeful that ...
which seems *really odd* to me. In *this* case, people seem to feel
that there is *another* transformation that yields
It is to be hoped that ...
arising, I suppose from the general form:
x_ly S ----> It is to be x_ed that S
But surely *this* is not an acceptable general rule since it would
give us such bizarre constructions as
It is to be cleared that ...
It is to be lucked that ...
and so on. So it seems that if our game is a grammar of English
and we wish to use "hopefully" (and similar words) as sentence
modifiers, we have to make a number of ad hoc exceptions to an
otherwise fairly general and elegant set of rules. I would prefer
to keep the nicer (less ad hoc) grammar and prohibit this use
of "hopefully".
--
Gary H. Merrill [Principal Systems Developer, C Compiler Development]
SAS Institute Inc. / SAS Campus Dr. / Cary, NC 27513 / (919) 677-8000
sas...@unx.sas.com ... !mcnc!sas!sasghm
Gary Merrill
While it is still a dearly held belief of mine that the use of
"hopefully" as a sentence adverb is disgusting and deviant, I
could be convinced otherwise. What would help in this respect is
the following:
Are there any *other* adverbs ending in "fully" that people want
to use (or are using) in the same way that is being discussed
with respect to "hopefully"? If there are, and the uses of these
seem to make sense, then I might well be convinced that such a
use of "hopefully" is such a deviation.
The only candidate I have for such adverbs is "truthfully," as in
Truthfully, it's been a long week.
But in this case I'm not sure that the analogy to "hopefully" is
close enough to sway me. For one thing, this statement seems to
make sense to me because a *statement* (sentence, if you will) is
the sort of thing that can be true -- perhaps can even be truthful
in the sense of "full of truth." Yet in
Hopefully, I'll go home soon.
I don't think I am saying that the sentence "I'll go home soon"
is full of hope.
In addition, it seems to me that if we wish to use "hopefully" in
this way, we should be willing to use other "fully" words in the
same way. Indeed, some of those who have said they *welcome* such
a use of "hopefully" ought to jump at the chance to use other
words in the same way. A short list of such words is
spitefully
hatefully
wistfully
doubtfully
artfully
blissfully
vengefully
and it seems to me that there is no inclination to use these in
a manner analogous to "hopefully." Am I wrong about this? Are
there others people *would* use in the manner of "hopefully"?
Milt Epstein
[I've deleted some stuff from Gary Merrill's posting in the interests
of brevity -- I think I have retained the main points.]
>In article <1992Apr3.1...@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu>, dhu...@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu (Donald C Hubin) writes:
> [ much good and interesting stuff omitted]
>
>|> One of the common uses of the sentence adverb is to express
>|> an attitude of the writer or speaker:
>|>
>|> [examples using "clearly", "strangely", "hopefully", "curiously",
>|> "luckily" , "oddly", and "amusingly" deleted]
>
>This collection of examples illustrates quite nicely exactly what
>I find grating about the use of "hopefully" as a sentence adverb.
>Notice that in all cases *except* "hopefully" there is a straight-
>forward transformation that can take place:
>
> x_ly S ----> It is x that S
>
>However, in the case of "hopefuly", we would get
>
> It is hopeful that ...
>
>which seems *really odd* to me.
>
>So it seems that if our game is a grammar of English
>and we wish to use "hopefully" (and similar words) as sentence
>modifiers, we have to make a number of ad hoc exceptions to an
>otherwise fairly general and elegant set of rules. I would prefer
>to keep the nicer (less ad hoc) grammar and prohibit this use
>of "hopefully".
If I understand this correctly, you are here objecting to the syntax
of the "hopefully" construction, and how it differs from the others.
The examples presented by Donald Hubin above seem to indicate that the
semantics of all these constructions are the same (i.e. they express
some attitude of the utterer).
What puzzles me, is that this seems inconsistent with something you
wrote earlier, to wit:
sas...@theseus.unx.sas.com (Gary Merrill) writes:
>In article <22...@goofy.Apple.COM>, cass...@apple.com (David Casseres) writes:
>
>|>I should have added that there *is* a grammatical argument: a bona
>|>fide sentence modifier refers directly to the sentence itself, or to
>|>the assertion made by the sentence, and so it makes sense for it to be
>|>an adverb. But "hopefully" applies to the speaker (if it means "I
>|>hope that") or to some abstract person (if it means "it is to be hoped
>|>that"). Thus it does not make sense for it to be an adverb -- an
>|>adjective is called for. That, I think, is why it bothers so many
>|>people.
>
>Thank you so very much. It is precisely this incompatibility that
>bothers me and resulted in my original posting. Having been trained
>(and worked for many years in a previous career) as a logician, I am
>perhaps a bit overly sensitive to such mismatches in natural language.
>However, I continue to believe that this is the kind of case that
>people *ought* to be sensitive to -- or the result is likely to be an
>inability to make important distinctions without resorting to
>cumbersome and stilted constructions. (I don't really want to start
>another round of debate about this ... )
This sounds more like you are objecting to the semantics of the
"hopefully" construction. So, this brings up a couple of questions:
1. Is it in syntax or semantics that the "hopefully" construct (i.e.
where it refers to the attitude of the speaker) differs from other
sentence adverbs?
2. For which reason do you object to it?
Some comments: The examples provided by Donald Hubin above (BTW, this
post of his has not arrived at my site yet, so I have only the above
quoted section to go by) seems to indicate that there are many
sentence adverbs that refer to the attitude of the speaker, so that
weakens the semantic argument. As to the syntax, it seems futile to
hope for every similar construct to behave exactly the same
grammatically -- I'm sure there are exceptions like this all over the
place.
Finally, not to flame, but I find it interesting these comments of
yours in response to the different posts above:
>This collection of examples illustrates quite nicely exactly what
^^^^^^^
>I find grating about the use of "hopefully" as a sentence adverb.
>Thank you so very much. It is precisely this incompatibility that
^^^^^^^^^
>bothers me and resulted in my original posting.
--
Milt Epstein
Department of Computer Science
University of Illinois
eps...@cs.uiuc.edu
David M Tate
>Thank you for a clear, informative, and non-acrimonious submission.
I'll see if I can maintain the trend :-).
>In article <1992Apr3.1...@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu>, dhu...@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu (Donald C Hubin) writes:
> [ much good and interesting stuff omitted]
[I've deleted the list of included examples]
>This collection of examples illustrates quite nicely exactly what
>I find grating about the use of "hopefully" as a sentence adverb.
>Notice that in all cases *except* "hopefully" there is a straight-
>forward transformation that can take place:
>
> x_ly S ----> It is x that S
>To wit:
> Clearly we have found that ...
> It is clear that we have found that ...
> Luckily the strength of the piece ...
> It is lucky that the strength of the piece ...
Allow me to turn this around.
The fact that this transformation doesn't work for "hopefully" is
precisely why, IMHO, "hopefully" (in its controversial sense) is so
much more valuable to the language than these other examples.
There's no compelling reason to say "Luckily, ____" instead of "It's lucky
that ______" or the more colloquial "It's lucky _______". On the other hand,
the sense of "Hopefully, _______" cannot be conveyed without stilted diction
or odd circumlocutions. Thus, "hopefully" fills a need in the language, and
facilitates ease of communication. (I don't necessarily buy the "It is to
be hoped that..." parsing; see below.)
Of course, there is the potential ambiguity problem. But, frankly, I don't
think I've seen "hopefully" used to mean "in a hopeful manner" more than a
half-dozen times in my adult life. It's *already* an archaism, along the
lines of "awful" to mean "full of awe". No doubt there was much consternation
among the literati when that transformation was first taking root, but these
things happen, and always because the people who speak the language have
(collectively, and usually unconsciously) perceived a need. Now, I will agree
with you as much as you like that selecting a word that looks like an adverb
for this purpose was an unfortunate "choice", but what's done is done. I
don't hear anyone suggesting that we suppress the word "likely" on the grounds
that it doesn't mean "in like manner".
Given an ambiguity that we might want to eliminate, surely the usage we should
avoid is the one that is (a) much rarer and (b) more difficult to say another
way.
>However, in the case of "hopefuly", we would get
> It is hopeful that ...
>which seems *really odd* to me. In *this* case, people seem to feel
>that there is *another* transformation that yields
>
> It is to be hoped that ...
>
>arising, I suppose from the general form:
>
> x_ly S ----> It is to be x_ed that S
Why must there be a general form or rule? Regularity is a happy accident
when it happens, not a driving force. When I hear "Hopefully, _____", I
don't "unpack" that into "It is to be hoped..." or any other paraphrase; it
just means what it means. Yes, people learning the language may be misled
by the apparent analogy with other sentential modifiers, but the disanalogy
is not so strong as to cripple anyone's comprehension.
>But surely *this* is not an acceptable general rule since it would
>give us such bizarre constructions as
>
> It is to be cleared that ...
> It is to be lucked that ...
I don't understand why there has to be a general rule. English is chock-full
of constructions which are not instances of a general rule, or which must be
interpreted (if one insists on interpreting in this manner) according to one
specific rule out of several candidates, in order to yield sense.
>and so on. So it seems that if our game is a grammar of English
>and we wish to use "hopefully" (and similar words) as sentence
>modifiers, we have to make a number of ad hoc exceptions to an
>otherwise fairly general and elegant set of rules. I would prefer
>to keep the nicer (less ad hoc) grammar and prohibit this use
>of "hopefully".
Here, I think, is the crux of our disagreement. My game is not "a grammar
of English". My game is communication. English is a language that has
evolved, over the centuries, as a tool to suit my communication needs. Any
description of this tool ("grammar") is a post-hoc attempt to describe a
system that is in many ways arbitrary, contradictory, ambiguous, but a *very*
effective tool for what I want to do.
I certainly hope that you don't interpret anything I've said here as a
personal attack.
--
David M. Tate |"The man who hath no music in himself
dt...@unix.cis.pitt.edu | Nor is not moved by concord of sweet sound
Poetry is the synthesis of | Is fit for treason, stratagems, and spoils
hyacinths and biscuits. -Sandburg | Shakespeare, "Merchant of Venice", A.V
David M Tate
> hatefully
> wistfully
> doubtfully
> artfully
> blissfully
> vengefully
>
>and it seems to me that there is no inclination to use these in
>a manner analogous to "hopefully." Am I wrong about this? Are
>there others people *would* use in the manner of "hopefully"?
I think I've seen "doubtfully" used in this fashion, in a sentence along the
lines of
Doubtfully, the democrats may yet recover and win the election.
I've never seen "blissfully" used in this fashion, but of the ones you list
it's the one I could see myself using:
Blissfully, hot coffee was waiting as I stepped in from the cold.
The others don't seem to fill a need for me; there's nothing I might want
to say that might use them other than in their ordinary adverbial senses.
Charles Geyer
> I am having some second thoughts about this "hopefully" business.
> While it is still a dearly held belief of mine that the use of
> "hopefully" as a sentence adverb is disgusting and deviant, I
> could be convinced otherwise. What would help in this respect is
> the following:
>
> Are there any *other* adverbs ending in "fully" that people want
> to use (or are using) in the same way that is being discussed
> with respect to "hopefully"? If there are, and the uses of these
> seem to make sense, then I might well be convinced that such a
> use of "hopefully" is such a deviation.
But why? You seem to be hung up on the notion that language is
(or should be) logical. As is abundantly clear from the notorious
difficulty of machine comprehension and translation of natural
language, it just ain't so.
From your earlier article <1992Apr3.1...@unx.sas.com>
> This collection of examples illustrates quite nicely exactly what
> I find grating about the use of "hopefully" as a sentence adverb.
> Notice that in all cases *except* "hopefully" there is a straight-
> forward transformation that can take place:
>
> x_ly S ----> It is x that S
>
> To wit:
>
> Clearly we have found that ...
> It is clear that we have found that ...
>
> Luckily the strength of the piece ...
> It is lucky that the strength of the piece ...
>
> etc. (The "curiously enough" case shows that the transformation is
> not so simple in some cases, but you get the idea.)
>
> However, in the case of "hopefuly", we would get
>
> It is hopeful that ...
>
> which seems *really odd* to me. In *this* case, people seem to feel
> that there is *another* transformation that yields
>
> It is to be hoped that ...
>
> arising, I suppose from the general form:
>
> x_ly S ----> It is to be x_ed that S
>
> But surely *this* is not an acceptable general rule ...
Yes surely it is not, but then there are no general rules in any
natural language. Your first candidate is not a general rule either.
So it is no argument against the use of "hopefully" as a sentence
adverb.
I avoid this "hopefully" because I don't want people to think I'm
an uneducated boob, but I never did understand what, if anything,
is wrong with it.
--
Charles Geyer
School of Statistics
University of Minnesota
cha...@umnstat.stat.umn.edu
Gary Merrill
|>
|> 1. Is it in syntax or semantics that the "hopefully" construct (i.e.
|> where it refers to the attitude of the speaker) differs from other
|> sentence adverbs?
|>
|> 2. For which reason do you object to it?
|>
My objection is that given what I take to be the semantics of
"hopefullly" (or of "fully" type adverbs in general), it doesn't
seem to make sense to allow a syntax in which it is a sentence
modifier.
Or, if you like, I might put it in a way that may be more familiar
to compiler writers:
Let's admit "hopefully" as a sentence modifier since
it makes our syntax easier. However, since it's meaningless
when applied to a sentence (sentences can't be full of hope,
only sentence utterers can), let's forbid its use on
semantic grounds.
The response to this is something like: But wait! We can impose
any semantics we like on "hopefully". So as a matter of convenience,
let's extend it to be meaningful when applied to sentences.
Okay, this can be done, but my point is that there is a price to
pay -- as there is in any language change. I do not see this
extension of our semantics as worthwhile (for reasons given
previously). The only reason there is so much dispute about
this particular case is that it is not very central to our everyday
use of language -- no one can visualize great disasters occurring
from it, or great upheavals in our language. Were I to suggest
something like extending our semantics to allow the use of adjectives
where we now use adverbs, I suspect people would become quite upset.
Were I to suggest that for the sake of simplicity we eliminate
nouns entirely and use only verb forms, or, alternatively use verbs
and nouns interchangeably, people would become very upset (though
I suspect that some contributors to this thread would stubbornly
insist that that was a great thing to do!). In principle, my
concern with "hopefully" is no different from the concern others
would voice over these changes they would regard as more fundamental.
Sherwood Daniel Silliman
> Were I to suggest
>something like extending our semantics to allow the use of adjectives
>where we now use adverbs, I suspect people would become quite upset.
This is already happening, not that I think it should.
U.S. sportscasters are notorious for changing American
spoken English, usually for the worse. One often hears
something along the lines of, "They played awful today."
--
Sherwood D. Silliman "When I give food to the poor, they call me a
saint. When I ask why the poor have no food,
they call me a communist." --Dom Helder Camara
Graham Toal
>
> Truthfully, it's been a long week.
Truthfully I am saying it has been a long week, ie I am saying it
while I am full of truth.
Hopefully, I'm going home => Full of hope I am going home, ie I am
going home full of hope.
Not the same as the Germanic hopefully at all.
Graham
--
Mark Slagle
Allow me to turn this around.
The fact that this transformation doesn't work for "hopefully" is
precisely why, IMHO, "hopefully" (in its controversial sense) is so
much more valuable to the language than these other examples.
There's no compelling reason to say "Luckily, ____" instead of "It's lucky
that ______" or the more colloquial "It's lucky _______". On the other hand,
the sense of "Hopefully, _______" cannot be conveyed without stilted diction
or odd circumlocutions. Thus, "hopefully" fills a need in the language, and
facilitates ease of communication. (I don't necessarily buy the "It is to
be hoped that..." parsing; see below.)
----
Your statement simply underscores the extent to which the
use of hopefully has undermined the language. There is
no need to resort to the tortured "It is to be hoped that..."
form in the overused passive voice to render the meaning
usually intended by "Hopefully...". Consider the following
sentence, heard daily on some large number of radio stations:
"Hopefully, we will win today."
The passive rendering suggested by you and others is:
"It is to be hoped that we will win today."
or, somewhat more simply:
"It is hoped that we will win today."
I think these sentences deserve all the derision you can
muster. But they deserve it at least as much because they
do not express the sense of the original and that they
fail to do so with such unredeemed passivity, as because
they are so horribly cumbersome. The real problem is that
the "Hopefully..." construction, if read literally, does not
express the plain meaning that is intended. Toward the ends
of clarity and simplicity, I offer this substitute:
"I hope we will win today."
The sentence is simple and direct and the actor is clearly
visible. I think that these attributes are part of the
common objection to it. The simplicity is thought to
reflect badly on the speaker who is trying to make a
grandiose statement out of a platitude and at the same
time avoid being the subject of the sentence out of fear
that his raw ego might be exposed.
As I final irony, I note that despite your spirited defense
of the usage you still don't seem to think it is good enough
for your own final sentence:
----
I certainly hope that you don't interpret anything I've said here as a
personal attack.
----
Even with the unnecessary "certainly", your sentence is much
preferable to "Hopefully, you don't interpret...", don't
you think?
--
----
Mark E. Slagle PO Box 61059
sla...@lmsc.lockheed.com Sunnyvale, CA 94088
408-756-0895 USA
Mark Slagle
to use (or are using) in the same way that is being discussed
with respect to "hopefully"? If there are, and the uses of these
seem to make sense, then I might well be convinced that such a
use of "hopefully" is such a deviation.
The only candidate I have for such adverbs is "truthfully," as in
Truthfully, it's been a long week.
But in this case I'm not sure that the analogy to "hopefully" is
close enough to sway me. For one thing, this statement seems to
make sense to me because a *statement* (sentence, if you will) is
the sort of thing that can be true -- perhaps can even be truthful
in the sense of "full of truth." Yet in
Hopefully, I'll go home soon.
I don't think I am saying that the sentence "I'll go home soon"
is full of hope.
----
The acceptability of "Truthfully, ..." rests on its ambiguity.
Is it the speaker or the statement that is full of truth? The
form says that it is the statement, but many people probably
mean to describe the speaker or at least the speaking as in
something like "Speaking truthfully..." or something equally
contorted. Maybe the word "truly" should be used, but in any
case it just seems like padding. Does the meaning of the
sentence change if we just drop it? If anything it adds only
emphasis, not content.
The usage seems to be one of the cases that form a bridge to the
"Hopefully, ..." abomination. Notice that if you really stretch
you can maintain that it is the statement that is being described
as hopeful, not the speaker, but that isn't what people usually
mean when they use it. So, I don't like to use truthfully
because it has no clear meaning, but I cringe at hearing hopefully
because it clearly means the wrong thing. And I wish people
would stop using both because they are messy and unnecessary.
Donald C Hubin
Graham Toal is a bit to terse for me here. If anything, his
paraphrase of the sentence Gary Merrill gives suggests that there is a
parallel between 'truthfully' and 'hopefully'. If we are allowed to
have 'truthfully' describe the state of the speaker (being full of
truth), why can't 'hopefully' do the same. So, 'hopefully, it will
rain soon' gets cached out as, 'hopefully I am saying it will rain
soon'--i.e., 'it will rain soon I am saying full of hope'. (Notice,
Graham Toal's paraphrase doesn't apply 'truthful' to the subject of
the sentence. Were the sentence one like, 'truthfully, he's not a
very subtle thinker', the paraphrase would not have the *subject* of
the sentence be full of truth.)
If Graham Toal has the right paraphrase for 'truthfully', it suggests
that 'hopefully' doesn't stand along in describing what the *speaker*
is full of rather than what the subject of the sentence is full of.
Gary Merrill suggests that this sort of case might soften him up a bit
on the controversial use of 'hopefully'. Are you feeling any softer,
Gary? :-)
Don
Graham Toal
:Graham Toal is a bit to terse for me here. If anything, his
:paraphrase of the sentence Gary Merrill gives suggests that there is a
:parallel between 'truthfully' and 'hopefully'. If we are allowed to
:have 'truthfully' describe the state of the speaker (being full of
:truth), why can't 'hopefully' do the same. So, 'hopefully, it will
That's what I was saying I think. We seem to be at cross purposes.
The first person suggested that 'truthfully, ...' was just like the
German-like use of 'hopefully, ...'. I was trying to show that it
wasn't, and was in fact exactly analogous to the old-fashion meaning
of 'hopefully' which was that the speaker was full of hope.
So yes, the two are the same, but only if you use the old style
of 'hopefully'.
Graham
David M Tate
>In article <204...@unix.cis.pitt.edu> dt...@unix.cis.pitt.edu (David M Tate) writes:
> Thus, "hopefully" fills a need in the language, and
> facilitates ease of communication. (I don't necessarily buy the "It is
> to be hoped that..." parsing; see below.)
Which, after some oratory, prompted the following analysis:
>Consider the following
>sentence, heard daily on some large number of radio stations:
>
> "Hopefully, we will win today."
>
>The passive rendering suggested by you and others is:
>
> "It is to be hoped that we will win today."
Where have I suggested this? I've *denied* this, right up there about 18
lines of text ago. Or is "I don't ... buy _____" an unfamiliar idiom for
you? If so, I apologize; I should try to maintain a more standard usage
in this forum, since it is read by people with widely varying idiolects.
>I think these sentences deserve all the derision you can muster.
Certainly.
>The real problem is that
>the "Hopefully..." construction, if read literally, does not
>express the plain meaning that is intended. Toward the ends
>of clarity and simplicity, I offer this substitute:
>
> "I hope we will win today."
Yeah, I was waiting for this one. (I'll pass over the "if read literally";
how else might one read it? Figuratively? Ironically?)
Perhaps when you say "Hopefully, ______", you mean "I hope _______". Or,
rather, *if* you said such a thing (which you wouldn't), that's what you
would mean by it.
Unfortunately, that's not what *I* mean when I say "Hopefully, _______".
If it were, then I'd just have said "I hope _____.", and everyone would have
been satisfied. There's a difference of scope, for one thing. In the former,
I am not making a claim exclusively about my personal desires, but rather
suggesting a consensus (and perhaps even attempting to elicit some information
from the person I'm addressing). The pragmatics of this usage are quite
different from simple "I hope _____." There's also a normative aspect: a
suggestion that yes, I hope this, but that you should also hope this.
If you can suggest an alternative phrasing which conveys these aspects of the
"Hopefully, ____" construction, in a less controversial yet unstilted way,
I will be only too happy to quit using "hopefully" as a sentence modifier.
>As I final irony, I note that despite your spirited defense
>of the usage you still don't seem to think it is good enough
>for your own final sentence:
> I certainly hope that you don't interpret anything I've said here as a
> personal attack.
Despite some people's willful misunderstanding of me, my purpose here is not
to antagonize anyone. I've been told that people around here find the usage
offensive; common politeness dictates that I avoid it, if there are reasonable
alternatives. Besides, I was talking about what I, personally, hope. I don't
claim to know what you hope with regard to the interpretation of my comments,
and I'm not going to tell you what you ought to hope. I see no irony here.
>Even with the unnecessary "certainly", your sentence is much
>preferable to "Hopefully, you don't interpret...", don't
>you think?
Yes, especially since the latter doesn't say the same thing.
(And, while I'm glad that you were already certain of my feelings on this
matter, others might have lacked your advantages.)
--
David M. Tate |"The man who hath no music in himself
dt...@unix.cis.pitt.edu | Nor is not moved by concord of sweet sound
A poem should be dumb, / As old | Is fit for treason, stratagems, and spoils
medallions to the thumb.-MacLeish | Shakespeare, "Merchant of Venice", A.V
David M Tate
>The acceptability of "Truthfully, ..." rests on its ambiguity.
>Does the meaning of the
>sentence change if we just drop it? If anything it adds only
>emphasis, not content.
Are you saying that added emphasis doesn't change the meaning of the
sentence? This may be true of mathematical formulae, but not of utterances
in practical discourse.
Emphasis is part of content. That's why the written language includes a '!'.
Gary Merrill
|> Gary Merrill suggests that this sort of case might soften him up a bit
|> on the controversial use of 'hopefully'. Are you feeling any softer,
|> Gary? :-)
Not since the posting out of Strunk & White! Eat adverbs and die, Philistines!
Richard Byrd
be explained by the
pattern: {x-ly S: -> It is x that S,}, but that this does not work so well for
"hopefully". Now while I agree that language does not always follow
a pattern, there does appear to be a pattern here that works for "hopefully",
"truthfully" and a few other cases.
When one says "Truthfully, there is a serious problem here", the sentence
might be viewed as equivalent to "I am being truthful in saying that there
is a serious problem here."
Similarly, the sentence "Frankly, I don't give a damn" amounts to "I am
being frank in saying that I don't give a damn", or maybe "If you want me to
be frank, well I don't give a damn".
Along the same lines, consider:
"Honestly, I cannot put up with this any more."
"Candidly, I don't think we have a chance."
"Thankfully, we didn't have another breakdown."
"Conservatively, we get about sixty such cases in a year."
"Optimistically, we can get it done in about a week."
and
"Hopefully, it will not rain tomoorrow."
In all these cases the adjective to which "-ly" is added can be viewed as
modifying the attitude of the speaker, and possibly in addition some consensus
attitude. Thus, the pattern might be viewed as
{x-ly S} -> {I am x in saying S}.
Alternatively, the pattern might be viewed as {x-ly S}->{x-ly I would say S},
where "x-ly" modifies "say". This seems essentially the same idea, but seems
closer for "conservatively:
"Conservatively, I would say we get about sixty such cases a year" leads
easily to the above sentence.
I think that when a sentence begins with an adverb, (and in many other
situations) one cannot expect to deduce what is going structurally
in a sentence from the arrangement of parts of speech alone. One must
take the meaning of the words into account to decide whether the
the adverb modifies the verb, the sentence, or the attitude of the speaker.
For example:
Frantically, I got out the mine before the explosion.
Fortunately, I got out the mine before the explosion.
Thankfully, I got out the mine before the explosion.
Mark Slagle
>The acceptability of "Truthfully, ..." rests on its ambiguity.
>Does the meaning of the
>sentence change if we just drop it? If anything it adds only
>emphasis, not content.
Are you saying that added emphasis doesn't change the meaning of the
sentence? This may be true of mathematical formulae, but not of utterances
in practical discourse.
Emphasis is part of content. That's why the written language includes a '!'.
----
Are you being deliberately contrary? In both this and
the previous case the form is of a question, but the
suggestion is that I think the answer is yes this time.
But in the earlier case I am willing to grant that the
use of the modifier may serve to add some emphasis and
thereby make some small contribution to the meaning of
the sentence. My opinion, however, is that it is just
unnecessary embellishment. In any case, I don't care
for the usage for the reasons stated in the article that
you quote. Also, if the addition of an exclamation mark
serves the same purpose, then the semantic contribution
of the word truthfully can't be very large.