¿Realmentes existen?: the “pluralization” of adverbs in -mente in Modern Spanish

Abstract

This paper presents a non-normative phenomenon almost unknown in Spanish, the “pluralization”

of adverbs in -mente (lugares realmentes sorprendentes ‘places really surprising’),

which is not found in the main grammars of this language. From the data of Corpus del español

we propose to make known this phenomenon, to show in which countries it is documented

and with what frequency. Later, we analyze which adverbs in -mente show this final

s in current Spanish and in what syntactic contexts are given. In particular, we show that the

kind of adverbs that are involved in this phenomenon are degree, modality, and focusing adverbs,

mainly when they modify adjectives or sentences. Finally, we propose an explanation

of the presence of this final -s based on two different processes that the Spanish language

undergoes in the grammatical category of adverbs: adverbial agreement, which so far has

been described for quantifier adverbs, and adverb “false” pluralization