Two Japanese Adverbials and Expressive Content

We can think of yoku and yoku(mo) as expressing the attitude of the speaker to the proposition φ in their scope. Both express that φ is surprising, but differ in that yoku expresses that the speaker feels positively about φ, while yokumo expresses that the speaker feels negatively about φ. Other subtle differences exist, as will be shown below. It should be noted that other uses of yoku (but not yokumo) exist, on which it means ‘often’ or ‘well,’ as in (3a) and (3b) respectively. This pattern, in which a complex use of an adverbial is parasitic on a more extensional use, is common crosslinguistically. Waltereit (2001) cites German ja, which means ‘yes’ but also can be used as a modal particle, and eigentlich, which ordinarily means ‘proper’ but also has a use as a relevance-marking particle. The particle use of ja will be discussed further in a later section.