Adverbs tend not to be the first go-to linguistic item in explorations of evidentiality, although Lois Kemp has done well to address this gap in the literature with her recently published PhD thesis, English Evidential -ly Adverbs from a Functional Perspective. Rather than a conventional monograph, this work is a compilation of slightly modified versions of Kemp’s previously published scholarship on the subject. The format here allows all these studies to be conveniently placed in a single location.

In chapter 1 (‘Introduction’, pp. 1–13), Kemp presents an overview of the state-of-the-art when it comes to adverbs’ place in evidentiality studies. She begins with a background on the concept of evidentiality – the linguistic encoding of a speaker’s evidence for an asserted proposition – and different notions of grammaticality. A Functional Discourse Grammar (FDG) approach to evidentiality is adopted throughout Kemp’s work. The main research objectives undergirding her studies are: to develop tests used to classify English evidential adverbs in terms of FDG categories; to explore the distribution of -ly adverbs in main clauses and clausal complements; and to discover which properties of adjectives determine distribution of non-clausal -ly adverbs in noun phrases. She then moves on to provide an overview of FDG (see, for example, Hengeveld & Mackenzie Reference Hengeveld and Mackenzie2008) and elaborates on evidentiality’s place within this framework. Kemp argues that communicated content occurs at the ‘Interpersonal Level’ of grammar, and this includes reportative evidentials (e.g. purportedly). On the other hand, evidentials involving propositional content (inferentials, e.g. presumably), episodes (deductives, e.g. clearly) and states of affairs (event perception, e.g. visibly) occur at the ‘Representational Level’. She then makes a number of predictions concerning modifiers and layerings that are tested in her studies (p. 10), which draw on the News on the Web (NOW) corpus for data.

Chapter 2, based on Kemp (Reference Kemp2025), focuses on ‘English evidential adverbs: Criteria and correlates’ (pp. 15–37). This is a purely qualitative study, aiming to document and classify different categories of English evidential adverbs. Kemp develops two tests for determining the precise evidential function of various adverbs, especially as some adverbs serve multiple functions. There is the Contingency and Contradiction Test (e.g. Reportedly Jane is ill, as somebody told me [Contingency] vs #Reportedly Jane is ill, although nobody told me [Contradiction]) and the Challengeability Test (e.g. He had reportedly left for Paris, but that’s not the case). Grammatical correlates of the FDG classification – scope, constituent order, co-occurrence and embedding – are given some attention as well.

Based on Kemp (Reference Kemp2018), chapter 3 explores ‘English evidential -ly adverbs in main clauses: A functional approach’ (pp. 39–65). Using the NOW corpus for quantitative support, Kemp employs a diagnostic combination of scopal and paraphrasing criteria in her corpus-driven study of evidential adverbs and their uses in main clauses. She documents the behaviour of a range of adverbs restricted to a single function (reportedly, purportedly, supposedly [reportative]; presumably [inference]), as well as of adverbs that evince multiple functions (apparently [reportative, inference, deduction]; evidently [reportative, inference]; obviously, seemingly, clearly [inference, deduction]; and visibly [deduction, event perception]). Kemp illustrates and justifies her classification by using a range of examples from the corpus.

Following her Reference Kemp2023 article, Kemp discusses ‘When English complement clauses meet evidential adverbs’ in chapter 4 (pp. 67–92). Taking Noonan’s (Reference Noonan and Shopen2007) lead on how the form of complement clauses can be determined by the semantics of complement-taking predicates, she looks at how this can be mapped onto the evidential categories of FDG, taking account of possible (mis)matches that occur in usage. She shows how matching between evidential adverb and complement is predicted to occur at the same or at a lesser FDG layer (Reportative > Inferential > Deduction > Event Perception), but not higher. So, for example, an inferential adverb would not co-occur with a reportative complement. However, Kemp uncovers a number of cases of misalignment in the NOW corpus (e.g. I know I’m supposedly worth £8m…, p. 86), which she concludes are the result of the speaker overriding the constraints of the complement clause.

Chapter 5 follows on from Kemp & Hengeveld (Reference Kemp and Hengeveld2022) and homes in on ‘English evidential -ly adverbs in the noun phrase from a functional perspective’ (pp. 93–119). Unlike the previous chapters (articles), Kemp uses more formal notations of FDG here to account for the types of modification which evidential adverbials provide in the noun phrase. She explores the permanent and contingent properties of the adjectives being modified, as well as distribution thereof in the NOW corpus. Kemp also draws a contrast between descriptive and evaluative adjectives, explores restrictiveness in FDG and how this is seen in the behaviour of evidential adverbs, and she also looks at the pragmatic effects of reportative, deductive and inferential evidentials in noun phrases (as event perception adverbials merely signal a state of affairs, no such effects are present in this category).

Kemp closes the monograph with a brief ‘Conclusion’ (pp. 121–4), in which she synthesises her work and shows how each study maps onto the predictions laid out in chapter 1.

Overall, Kemp has made a worthy contribution to evidentiality studies in English. This is probably the most comprehensive account of evidential adverbials to date, and Kemp provides a range of examples to illustrate her arguments throughout the chapters. They are admittedly taken from a single genre (newspapers), which might well affect the quantitative angle if compared with other genres, but I don’t believe it detrimental when it comes to the qualitative aspect of Kemp’s discussion – which is by far the more significant of the two. Readers without a background in FDG should be able to follow the discussion here, as Kemp provides a clear introduction to the framework and a straightforward application to evidential markers.

I did find the additional use of formal notation in chapter 5 a bit out of place when compared to the other chapters, but as stated above, this piece is an assembly of previously published work rather than a straightforward monograph. To this end, though, there is much repetition in each chapter when the basics of evidentiality, the architecture of FDG, and how the former is integrated into the latter are laid out time and again. These aren’t necessarily criticisms, given the nature of the work, but it is worth bearing in mind when approaching the text.

I would say my only qualm with the content of Kemp’s analysis is in chapter 4 when Kemp discusses mismatches between the evidential adverb and the semantics of the complement-taking predicate. I found these cases very interesting and I agree with Kemp’s conclusion that the speaker is the one who intently overrides these constraints; however, it would have been nice to hear why this happens. There seem to be a lot of mismatches in the data, given the predictions resulting from Kemp’s application of Noonan’s framework. Some critical reflection on what pragmatic or extra-linguistic factors might be responsible for such semantic ‘mismatches’ could not go amiss, and it would go a long way in helping Kemp justify the application of a framework that is noticeably at odds with the data it is supposed to account for.

These issues aside, this is a worthwhile contribution to evidentiality studies that provides an extensive account of a heretofore understudied type of marker – the adverb. The methodological approach using FDG is well articulated, the argument is supported by a wide range of examples and the conclusions are convincing.