Constellation, le dépôt institutionnel de l'Université du Québec à Chicoutimi

Résumé

In Modern English, adverbs are generally derived from an adjectival root to which the suffix -ly is added. However, -ly is also found in other kinds of words such as adjectives and even a few substantives. Therefore, the problem of the English suffix ?ly lies in the fact that it is generally considered an adverbial suffix even though it is used to form other types of words. The suffix apparently has many uses which would endow it with many functions and meanings.

To complicate matters further, some -ty adjectives and adverbs have bare counterparts, and they form adjectival and adverbial pairs. The adverbial pairs are made up of two adverbs derived from the same adjectival root, and one adverb is characterized by the -ly suffix, whereas the other adverb is bare, meaning that it is identical in form to the root. Here is an example: He thought deeply about religious matters, and He plunged deep into the ocean. An example of an adjectival pair would be a kind man and a kindly heart.

Interestingly, in a good number of adverbial pairs, the -ly adverb and the bare adverb are not interchangeable, as is the case for deep and deeply, mentioned above. This suggests that there is a semantic difference between the two types of adverbs, and that this difference would probably be explained by the presence of the suffix.

Since the -ly suffixes, be they adverbial, adjectival, or substantival, are morphologically identical and since they have a common etymological root, the question of whether a definition exists that could be generalized to all uses of the suffix can be raised. If such a semantic link existed, this would mean that -ly does far more than, as many grammars claim, simply generate adverbs.

The goal of this thesis is to show that -ly is a consistently meaningful suffix that tells us something about the nature of the genesis of the lexical content of whatever part of speech the word may belong to. In other words, it will be proposed that there exists a unique semantic value of the suffix in tongue which would explain all of its uses in discourse.