A Study in Computer-Assisted Lexicology: Evidence on the Emergence of Hopefully as a Sentence Adverb from the JSTOR Journal Archive and Other Electronic Resources

"Hopefully" as a sentence adverb "comes naturally" to speakers of English, so naturally that it could be used, as Shapiro demonstrates, for many decades without provoking comment by or even coming to the attention of lexicographers and writers on usage. As such, "hopefully&q...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:American speech 1998-10, Vol.73 (3), p.279-296
Main Author: Shapiro, Fred R.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Adverbs
Diachrony and historical linguistics
Dictionaries
English language
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Grammar
Hope
Lexicology
Lexis
Linguistics
Online searching
Semantics
Words
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Summary:"Hopefully" as a sentence adverb "comes naturally" to speakers of English, so naturally that it could be used, as Shapiro demonstrates, for many decades without provoking comment by or even coming to the attention of lexicographers and writers on usage. As such, "hopefully" is an outstanding example of what has been called a "stealth word," achieving notoriety after a long period of lurking unnoticed in the lexicon.
ISSN:0003-1283
1527-2133
DOI:10.2307/455826