RB Other adverbs
Definition
Residual adverb category after removing frequency, place, time, amplifiers, downtoners, emphatics, and hedges.
Detection Rules
Uses tag refinement architecture: features with refines: RB (AMP, DWNT, EMPH, HDG, FREQ, PLACE, TIME, DMA, XX0) are automatically excluded via cat_map. Only CONC requires explicit exclusion (crosses POS boundaries).
cql[cat="RB"]
combine: _ & !CONC
mfte
Direct replication of MFTE’s observed behavior. MFTE counts residual RB after re-tagging adverb subcategories. Uses explicit excludes rather than cat refinement for exact MFTE match.
cql[pos="RB"]
combine: _ & !AMP & !DWNT & !EMPH & !HDG & !FREQ & !PLACE & !TIME & !DMA & !CONC & !XX0
pybiber
cql[pos="RB|RBR|RBS|WRB"]
Normalization
Per words
Examples
Unfortunately that’s the case.
Source: le_foll_2024
Exactly two weeks.
Source: le_foll_2024
He could so easily but he knows better.
Source: le_foll_2024
He’s still gonna come back.
Source: le_foll_2024
Sources
- biber_1988 — Biber, Douglas (1988) : Variation across Speech and Writing
- mfte — Le Foll, Elen & Shakir, Muhammad (2023/2025) : Multi-Feature Tagger of English (MFTE) — Python version
- pybiber — Brown, David West & Reinhart, Alex (2026) : pybiber — Python package for linguistic feature extraction and Multi-Dimensional Analysis
- xiao_2009 — Xiao, Richard (2009) : Multidimensional analysis and the study of world Englishes
Notes
Biber’s general “adverbs” category; MFTE splits out subcategories.