It’s an established and well-understood usage. You see, the contested use of hopefully is as a sentence adverb, i.e., an adverb that sets the mood for a sentence, and it’s far from being the only word we use in that way. But that’s not the only problem with that analysis. If you say ‘Hopefully, I am going,’ it means ‘I am going hopefully.’ To use it otherwise is wrong.” The problem is that it is used that way, is used that way clearly and effectively, and thereby adds to the expressive potential of English. The “logical” analysis that leads to rejection goes as follows: “ Hopefully is an adverb meaning ‘with hope,’ so it must apply to the verb. But, sadly, there is a fuss, so, clearly, I need to address it. Frankly, I don’t see what the fuss is about. That’s the pragmatic side of the question – does a given usage enhance or detract from the expressive potential of the language? Well, let us examine the one at hand. They can be influenced, but one does well to consider what sort of influence to exert and why. Natural languages are not constructed they arise spontaneously and are analyzed after the fact. Failure to analyze grammatical functions correctly is presented not as a defect, which it is, but as a virtue: you have logic on your side, so all those people who are saying things in a way that does not match your analysis must be wrong, wrong, wrong! Well, garbage in, garbage out: if your assumptions are wrong or your logic is incomplete, your conclusions will be rubbish.Īnd the usage always comes first. But in the end the physical fact was indisputable.īut in language, because we do have the opportunity to influence its use, and it is a form of behaviour susceptible to having “correct” and “incorrect” forms, platypus denial can persist for a long, long time. It simply didn’t fit within their tidy taxonomies. Biologists refused to believe that a platypus could lay eggs and yet be a mammal. Not that it’s never been done, but when it’s done it doesn’t generally last. But if you find data that contradict your theory, you need to revise or discard it it’s considered rather bad form to simply declare the data wrong. If it is further confirmed, it is a theory. In the sciences, you see how something works, and you make a hypothesis. Can you say hopefully like that, setting the tone of a sentence without modifying the main verb? Ignoring for a moment how long people have been doing so, isn’t it illogical?Īh, logic, logic, logic. Ah, greet the morning hopefully! Hopefully it will be a nice day.īut there it is: the bitter twinge, the fly in the ointment. The motion your tongue makes is a little reminiscent of the sun salutation, a common yoga routine. Say it now, slowly: hope – your mouth is in a shape to swallow something, a gulp of liquid perhaps you sure hope it’s good! – ful – now your mouth is full with your tongue, as it arches like a stretching cat, tip and tail high – ly – the tongue is now pressing its mid part forward and up, as the tip and tail drop back. So this word is, like, full of hope! It was assembled in stages, historically: though its parts date back into the mists of time, hopeful is first cited by the Oxford English Dictionary from 1594 (in Shakespeare’s Richard III, not the most hopeful play in the canon), and hopefully from 1639. Both hope and full come from Germanic roots and have always meant what they mean now (though their forms have modified over time – full is cognate with forms throughout the Indo-European languages, all having a labial and a liquid, as in plenum in Latin and plérés and pléthos in Greek). The ful is just full written with one l instead of two. In this case it makes the word an adverb, but there is an identical and cognate suffix that makes adjectives: kingly, early, leisurely, etc. The ly comes from a Germanic root meaning “appearance, form” that is also the root of like (all forms of the word like are related and have this origin). Let us start with a morphological decomposition: hope+ ful+ ly. The word and its uses will be fully examined, and, I hope, fully tasted. Will the dispute that has brought such despair to an ostensibly bright-eyed word be resolved, or at least addressed enlighteningly? I write this note hopefully hopefully, it will sort out some key points. Ah! You see this word, controversial in the past century, and look hopefully.
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