What English Measure Adverbs Partly and Partway Measure: A Collexeme Analysis

This study investigates the syntactico-semantic conditions imposed by the measure adverbs partly and partway. To meet this objective, a collexeme analysis is conducted for the two syntactic configurations that take modification by the pre-verbal measure adverb partly and its post-verbal counterpart partway. The results demonstrate that while the syntactic targets of these two adverbs overlap, partly and partway differ in their lexical semantic requirements. Specifically, partly requires a part-whole relationship within the verb phrase it modifies, which predicates entailing an inner ‘state’ tend to satisfy. In contrast, partway detects the presence of a ‘Path’ either licensed inherently by the predicate itself or structurally added by a separate goal argument. The generalization that emerges from the present findings correctly explain the patterns of motion verbs to a goal in measure adverbial modification, in comparison with those of change-of-state and/or incremental theme verbs. As these verb classes commonly encode a ‘Path’, they are all strongly associated with partway. However, unlike the latter, motion verbs to a goal cannot be described through a part-whole relationship and therefore do not co-occur with partly.