Chapter 9
Attitudes to flat adverbs and English usage advice
Widespread as they are in non-standard and informal varieties of English, flat or suffixless adverbs are
subject to prescriptive criticism when appearing in standard English. In the present study we repeated the survey by
Mittins et al. (1970) in Attitudes to English Usage to
investigate whether the acceptability of flat adverbs has changed since the late 1960s. Our findings suggest that
acceptability has grown over the past fifty years, with flat adverbs losing their status of a usage problem. The
analysis of the Hyper Usage Guide of English database suggests the same. Interestingly, we identified a new usage
problem related to the usage of adverbs, one primarily associated with American English, the dual-pair adverb,
thus/thusly.
Article outline
- 1.Introduction
- 2.The survey
- 3.Usage of slow/slowly and quicker/more quickly, and of thusly
- 3.1
Slow/slowly and quicker/more quickly
- 3.2
Thusly
- 4.Survey results
- 4.1The respondents
- 4.2Acceptability ratings for quicker, go slow and
thusly
- 4.3Acceptability ranking for go slow, quicker and thusly across
sociolinguistic groups
- 5.Go slow/slowly, quicker/more quickly and thusly in the usage
guides
- 6.The usage guides and the informants
- 7.Conclusion
-
Acknowledgment
-
Notes
-
References
References (61)
References
Primary sources
The American heritage dictionary. 1996, ed. by William Morris. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
The American heritage guide to contemporary usage and style. 2005, ed. by Joseph P. Pickett, Steven Kleinedler & Susan Spitz. Boston, NY: Houghton Mifflin.![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Ayto, John. 2002. Good English! 2nd edition. Oxford: Oxford University Press.![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Burchfield, Robert. 1996. Fowler’s Modern English usage. 3rd ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press.![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Butterfield, Jeremy (ed.). 2007. Oxford A-Z of English usage. Oxford: Oxford University Press.![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Carter, Bonnie & Craig Skates. 1990. The Rinehart guide to grammar and usage. 2nd edition. Fort Worth: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Inc.![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Ebbitt, Wilma R. & David R. Ebbitt. 1978.
Writer’s guide and index to English. 6th edition. Glenview, Cook County, Illinois: Scott, Foresman and Company.![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Evans, Bergen & Cornelia Evans. 1957. A dictionary of contemporary American usage. New York: Random House.![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Fowler, H. W. 1926. A dictionary of Modern English usage. Oxford: University Press.![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Garner, Bryan A. 1998. A dictionary of Modern American usage. New York: Oxford University Press.![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Gowers, Sir Ernest. 1965. Fowler’s Modern English usage. 2nd ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press.![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Greenbaum, Sidney & Janet Whitcut. 1988. The Longman guide to English usage. Harlow: Longman.![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Krapp, George Philip. 1927. A comprehensive guide to good English. New York: Rand McNally.![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Live and Learn: A guide for all, who wish to speak and write correctly (Anon., 1856?). New York: Dick & Fitzgerald, Publishers.![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Mager, N. H., & S. K. Mager. 1993. Prentice hall encyclopedic dictionary of English usage. 2nd edition revised by John Domini. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall.![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Morris, William & Mary Morris. 1975. Harper dictionary of contemporary usage. New York: Harper and Row.![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Nicholson, Margaret. 1957. A dictionary of American-English usage: Based on Fowler's Modern English usage. New York: Oxford University Press.![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Peters, Pam. 2004. The Cambridge guide to English usage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ![DOI logo](https://benjamins.com/logos/doi-logo.svg)
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Pocket Fowler’s Modern English usage. 1999. Oxford: Oxford University Press.![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Randall, Bernice. 1988. Webster’s new world guide to current American usage. New York, NY: Prentice Hall, Simon & Schuster.![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Swan, Michael. 1980. Practical English usage. Oxford: Oxford University Press.![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Taggart, Caroline. 2010. Her ladyship’s guide to the Queen’s English. London: National Trust.![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Trask, R. L. 2001. Mind the gaffe. The Penguin guide to common errors in English. London/New York: Penguin.![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Vallins, G. H. 1960. Better English. 2nd edition. London: André Deutsch.![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Webster’s dictionary of English usage. 1989. Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster Inc., Publishers.![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Wilson, Kenneth G. 1993. The Columbia guide to Standard American English. New York: Columbia University Press.![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Wood, Frederick T. 1962. Current English usage. London: Macmillan.![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
The Written Word 1977. ed. by Fernando de Mello Vianna, Anne D. Steinhardt & Carole La Mond. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company.![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Secondary sources
Beal, Joan. 2009. Three hundred years of prescriptivism (and counting). In Ingrid Tieken-Boon van Ostade & W. Van der Wurff (eds.), Current issues in Late Modern English, 35–56. Bern: Peter Lang.![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Biber, Douglas & Edward Finegan. 1989. Styles of stance in English: Lexical and grammatical marking of evidentiality and
affect. Text 9 (1). 93–124. ![DOI logo](https://benjamins.com/logos/doi-logo.svg)
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Biber, Douglas, Stig Johansson, Geoffrey Leech, Susan Conrad & Edward Finegan. 1999. Longman grammar of spoken and written English. London: Longman.![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Burridge, Kate. 2010. Linguistic cleanliness is next to godliness: Taboo and purism.” English Today 26 (2). 3–13. ![DOI logo](https://benjamins.com/logos/doi-logo.svg)
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Crystal, David. 2006. Into the twenty-first century.” In Lynda Mugglestone (ed.), The Oxford history of English, 394–413. Oxford: Oxford University Press.![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Curzan, Anne. 2014. Fixing English. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Davies, Mark. 2008. The corpus of contemporary American English: 450 million words, 1990–present. [URL].![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Finegan, Edward. 1971. Linguistics, lexicography, and attitudes toward usage during the last decade. Pacific Coast Philology 6. 20–25. ![DOI logo](https://benjamins.com/logos/doi-logo.svg)
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Hedges, Marilyn. 2011.
Telling it like it is. An assessment of attitudes to language change based on the use of
like. MA thesis: University of Leiden.![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Huddleston, Rodney & Geoffrey Pullum. 2002. The Cambridge grammar of the English language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ![DOI logo](https://benjamins.com/logos/doi-logo.svg)
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Hughes, Arthur & Peter Trudgill. 1979. English accents and dialects. London: Edward Arnold.![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Lange, Cynthia. 2012. Thusly is not a word?
Bridging the Unbridgeable (blog), 21 March 2012 ([URL]).![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Leech, Geoffrey. 2002. Recent grammatical change in English: Data, description, theory.” In Karin Aijmer & Bengt Altenberg (eds.), Language and computers, advances in corpus linguistics, 61–68. Amsterdam etc.: Rodopi.![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Lukač, Morana. 2015. Linguistic prescriptivism in letters to the editor. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development 37 (3). 1–13.![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Lukač, Morana. 2018. What is the difference between thus and thusly?
e-Rea: Revue électronique d’études sur le monde anglophone
. [URL].![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Lukač, Morana. Forthcoming. Grassroots Prescriptivism. English Today 34 (4).
Mair, Christian. 2006. Twentieth-century English. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ![DOI logo](https://benjamins.com/logos/doi-logo.svg)
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Milroy, James & Lesley Milroy. [1985] 2012. Authority in language. Investigating Standard English. 4th ed. London: Routledge.![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Mittins, W. H., Mary Salu, Mary Edminson & Sheila Coyne. 1970. Attitudes to English usage [repr. 1975]. London: Oxford University Press.![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Nevalainen, Terttu & Helena Raumolin-Brunberg. 2003. Historical Sociolinguistics. London etc.: Longman.![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
ODNB: The Oxford dictionary of national biography, Online edition, [URL].
OED Online: The Oxford English dictionary, Online edition, [URL].
Opdahl, Lisa. 2000. LY or zero suffix? A study in variation of dual-form adverbs in present-day English. Bern: Peter Lang.![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Peters, Pam. 2015. Dual adverbs in Australian English. In Peter Collins (ed.), Grammatical change in English worldwide, 179–204. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Pullum, Geoffrey K. 2004. Ideology, power and linguistic theory. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the MLA in Philadelphia, PA. [URL].![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Straaijer, Robin. 2014. Hyper usage guide of English database. [URL].![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Straaijer, Robin. 2018. The usage guide: Evolution of a genre. In Ingrid Tieken-Boon van Ostade (ed.), English usage guides: History, advice, attitudes, 11–29. Oxford: Oxford University Press.![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Tieken-Boon van Ostade, Ingrid. 2013. Studying attitudes to English usage. English Today 29 (4). 3–12. ![DOI logo](https://benjamins.com/logos/doi-logo.svg)
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Tieken-Boon van Ostade, Ingrid. 2015. Flat adverbs: Acceptable today? English Today 31 (3). 9−10. ![DOI logo](https://benjamins.com/logos/doi-logo.svg)
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Tieken-Boon van Ostade, Ingrid. In progress. Describing prescriptivism. Weiner, Edmund. 1988. On editing a usage guide. In E. G. Stanley & T. F. Hoad(eds.), Words. For Robert Burchfield’s sixty-fifth birthday, 171–183. Cambridge: D.S. Brewer.![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Cited by (3)
Cited by three other publications
COLLINS, PETER
2022.
Hypercorrection in English: an intervarietal corpus-based study.
English Language and Linguistics 26:2
► pp. 279 ff.
![DOI logo](//benjamins.com/logos/doi-logo.svg)
Yáñez-Bouza, Nuria
2022.
Methodological approaches to the study of codification, prescription, and prescriptivism.
Studia Neophilologica 94:3
► pp. 334 ff.
![DOI logo](//benjamins.com/logos/doi-logo.svg)
Tieken-Boon van Ostade, Ingrid
2021.
Of greengrocers, sports commentators, estate agents and television presenters: who’s in a usage guide and why.
Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development 42:9
► pp. 783 ff.
![DOI logo](//benjamins.com/logos/doi-logo.svg)
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 28 june 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers.
Any errors therein should be reported to them.