The contrast in adverbs

Just as with adjectives – perhaps more so, or at least more famously – the position of an adverb also correlates with its interpretation (Jackendoff 1972; Bellert 1977; McConnell-Ginet 1982; Wyner 1994, 1998a; Geuder 2000; Ernst 1984, 2002; Cinque 1999; Alexiadou 1997; Rawlins 2003, and many others). To take just two examples, the interpretation of each instance of happily in (1) is different, and in (2), only (2c) has the manner reading presumably intended:

Again, then, the effect of interest here is part of a larger and more complicated picture.

There is an adverbial version of the restrictive–nonrestrictive contrast. Peterson (1997) observes the ambiguity in examples along the lines of (3):

Peterson doesn’t relate this contrast to the structural position of the modifier, though – in fact, he suggests postverbal manner adverbs like the one in (4b) have nonrestrictive readings too. But as Shaer (2000, 2003) points out, the availability of such nonrestrictive readings is doubtful.¹

This may be clearer in embedded contexts, as in (5), or – paralleling the adjectival cases more closely – in antecedents of conditionals that restrict a quantificational adverb, as in (5).

Unlike the (a) sentences, the (b) sentences unambiguously express regret that the relevant ship-sinking wasn’t faster. To sharpen these intuitions a bit, suppose that I make the wager in (7):

If it turns out that Floyd has in fact read no medical books, I don’t lose the bet – indeed, if he has read no medical books but nonetheless manages to perform a successful nose job in a moving taxi, I win it. If, though, Floyd manages to perform a successful nose job in a moving taxi, but it was not easy, a quandary results – it is not clear whether I win or lose the bet. This is expected, because the easily in (7) has both the restrictive and nonrestrictive readings, and it is not clear which was intended in the original bet. On the restrictive reading, I lose. On the nonrestrictive one, I win.

If nonrestrictive interpretations were in general possible postverbally, we would expect the same uncertainty to arise if the terms of the bet had instead been (8):

But this is not so. If this is the bet we had made, and it had in fact required some effort for Floyd to perform the nose job, I clearly lose. So a nonrestrictive reading is not possible here.

1 The ^∗ here is mine.