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Anonymous Posted 14 years ago
Linguistics Studies
Is "really" an expletive?
I know that "there" in "There are 50 states" is called an expletive.
On the "books" section of Google, I have just read a passage from On Sentence-Rhythm and Word Order in Modern English by August Warren, published in 1908.
Dr. Warren claims that the adverb "really" is a "mere expletive" in these sentences:
"If he really loves you --, because unreal love is not love at all."
"My temperament demands that ... I should show her what I really feel."
Does anyone have an idea as to why Dr. Warren labled that adverb as an expletive? What do you think he was trying to say?
Thank you.
On the "books" section of Google, I have just read a passage from On Sentence-Rhythm and Word Order in Modern English by August Warren, published in 1908.
Dr. Warren claims that the adverb "really" is a "mere expletive" in these sentences:
"If he really loves you --, because unreal love is not love at all."
"My temperament demands that ... I should show her what I really feel."
Does anyone have an idea as to why Dr. Warren labled that adverb as an expletive? What do you think he was trying to say?
Thank you.
Top answer
His name is August Western .
- His name is August Western .
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5 Answers
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James MWhat do you think he was trying to say?He was saying that the word 'really' does not add any significant meaning to the sentence in which it occurs.
He was doubtless using this definition of "expletive" or something similar.
"Rather than providing a grammatical or structural meaning as the other structure-word classes do, the expletiv
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Hi, I've been writing an essay on expletives and I found that quote: "Rather than providing a grammatical or structural meaning as the other structure-word classes do, the expletives-sometimes defined as 'empty words'-generally act simply as operators that allow us to manipulate sentences in a variety of ways." My problem is that I need to put the reference of this quote, and I need the page numbe
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Anonymousso it would be nice if you could tell me the exact page number where this quote appears in that bookIf you can't find the information on the link given above, then you'll have to research it on your own, I'm afraid, either on-line or at a library.
CJ
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