adverbs deriving from participle adjectives

[stromfi]

Hi,

Many adjectives that end in -ing can be changed into adverbs. Examples: surprising - surprisingly, disappointing - disappointingly, amazing - amazingly, etc.
On the other hand, there are some -ing adjectives that don't take an -ly well. Examples:
tiring - tiringly, exhausting - exhaustingly

In the case of adjectives that end in -ed, there are many that don't take the adverbial -ly, but few will, however. Example:
excited - excitedly (I can only think of this right now.)

Does anyone have a good explanation for this that I could use?

[fluffyhamster]

Do a search for 'affix' and take a look at the 'Teach roots or not?' thread (I know you're talking about suffixes but they are obviously related: do you teach many discrete vocabulary items or try to generalize on the basis of a few typical examples of morphological processes? I personally would prefer to teach discrete lexical items to a) ensure there was no confusion or overgeneralization and b) to ensure students' greater familiarity with such items when they next encountered them).

I'd be wary of ruling certain combinations out as unlikely or odd, especially if you intend to formulate rules and explanations just on the basis of your intuition and reasoning. Have you searched Google for some illustrative examples of 'tiringly' (about 6,000 examples) and 'exhaustingly' (over 50,000)? And what about online dictionaries? I just checked the Longman online and it is possible to do a wildcard search using the string '*edly' (to get a quite long list of possible entries):
http://pewebdic2.cw.idm.fr/

You could try other dictionaries too (doesn't seem to work with the Cambridge ALD or Oxford ALD online, though).

The one thing that can be said right away is that the first group of words you have there could all definitely function as sentence (indeed, stance) adverbs - I guess this class pretty much all ends in -ly. The tiringly and exhaustingly do seem a bit useless, but stick on an -edly (to join up with excitedly etc) and they can modify a whole load of action verbs.

Sorry to be so tiringly, non-exhaustively thin (I am not that tired but I may have tired you LOL).

[stromfi]

Thank you, fluffyhamster, for your reply. The online dictionary idea did occur to me, as well, but Merriam Webster didn't seem to have those words, neither did Collins Cobuild. Anyway, thanks for your help and the link.