Position of adverbs | #1 | #2 | #3 | #4 | #5 | #6 | #7 | #8 |

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[Position of adverbs #2]
FOCUS: Natural position of adverbs.
Use the corpus to solve the following exercises:

1) According to the corpus results, can "probably" occur in initial position?
yes
no
yes, but only in film dialogue

2) According to the corpus results, can "often" occur in initial position?
yes
no
yes, but only in film dialogue

3) Search for "often" again; first sort concordance by LEFT word, then sort concordance by RIGHT word. Which of the following statements is true?
"often" typically PRECEDES "have to"
"often" typically FOLLOWS "have to"
"often typically splits "have to" (i.e."have often to")

4) Search for "seldom" and "rarely"; which of the two is most commonly used in the corpus?
"seldom" is slightly more common than "rarely"
"rarely" is slightly more common than "seldom"
"rarely" is much more common than "seldom"

5) Look at line 8 of the search results of both "seldom *s" and "rarely *s"; which of the following statements is true about those lines? (Sort concordance by keyword.)
"seldom" and "rarely" in clause-medial position require no Subject
"seldom" and "rarely" in clause-initial position require SV inversion
"seldom" and "rarely" in clause-final position have the same meaning

6) Search for "seldom" again; first sort concordance by LEFT word, then sort concordance by RIGHT word. Which of the following statements is true?
"seldom" typically FOLLOWS a form of "be"
"seldom" typically PRECEDES a form of "be"
"seldom" never combines with a form of "be"

7) Search for "could never" and "never could"; which of the two is most commonly used in the corpus?
"could never"
"never could"
equally common (same number of occurrences)

8) Search for "will always" and "always will"; which of the two is most commonly used in the corpus?
"will always"
"always will"
equally common (same number of occurrences)


Last updated 4 October 2023, SOE
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