“Elite Writing Styles: Zero and-ly Adverbs in The Mary Hamilton Papers”

This paper discusses the variation between zero and –ly adverbs (e.g. extreme well vs. extremely well) in The Hamilton Papers in the eighteenth century. The read-only version of this article is available here: <https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/share/author/XH4PF5GZCXJZCN4IYMGI?target=10.1111/1754-0208.70005>

This paper examines variation between zero and –ly forms with ten selected adverbs: exceeding(ly), extreme(ly), ful(ly), mighti(ly), prodigious(ly), quick(ly), remarkab(ly), safe(ly), scarce(ly), and slow(ly). Overall, the use of –ly forms is well established in the dataset. Nevertheless, the tendency differs depending on the lexical item. Also, the choice of forms depends on syntactic environments where they occur. The paper concludes with a quick survey of Mary Hamilton’s choice between zero and –ly advers, showing that her usage is slightly more conservative than in the dataset as a whole.

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