On the Interpretation of Sentence Adverbials in English: Their Truth-Conditional Status

The main aim of this research is to provide a semantic/pragmatic analysis of four classes of English adverbials which take a sentential scope: illocutionary adverbials including frankly, attitudinal adverbials induding unfortunately, evidential adverbials induding evidently or obviously, hearsay adverbials induding reportedly. I attempt to look at whether/when they do or do not affect the truth-conditions of the utterance and explain how their truth-conditional status are determined within the framework of relevance theory (Sperber and Wilson 1986/95,Wilson and Sperber 1993, Ifantidou 1994). The results of questionnaire research I conducted show that the truth-conditional status of sentence adverbials can very much vary, which would be the best captured by Ifantidou's descriptions within the framework of relevance theory, rather than other possibilities.Furthermore, I argue that her suggestions in explaining how an adverbial can affect the truth-conditions of the utterance need some refinement: whether an adverbial alters the truth-conditions of the utterance involves diverse factors of its surrounding environments inside or outside of the utterance. A general prindple of utterance interpretation, such as the principles of relevance, should play a(more) influential role in determining the truth-conditional status of sentence adverbials.