Abstract

This article reports on the findings obtained in the exploration of the evaluative potential of adverbs ending in-mente in a text about the recent history of Chile. The study is situated in the semantic-discursive stratum of appraisal, from which the realization in the lexicogrammatical stratum is examined by means of the semantic model of appraisal and other approaches, which organize the evaluative meanings in three semiotic zones: engagement, attitude, and graduation. The results reveal the capacity of the adverb to express a variety of evaluative meanings, especially in the semantic regions of Force and Focus that categorize the graduation subsystem. This capacity includes the presence of evaluative couplings