Question

Dear Redwood Girl,

Rewrite the following sentence by changing the adjective to adverb-

"They are hopeful of an early settlement of the issue."

"Hopefully, they settle the issue early." or "Hopefully, an early settlement of the issue was reached by them."
Which is more accurate?

Thanks

Answer 1

In the original sentence, the event that is being discussed(i.e. the settlement of the issue) has not yet happened, but is supposed to happen in the future. So, your second statement,"Hopefully, an early settlement of the issue was reached by them." changes the verb to its past tense, which isn't preferable. During the transformation of a sentence, you must try not to change the verb's tense, as it sometimes changes the meaning of the sentence.
If you make your first sentence,"Hopefully, they will settle the issue early.", it sounds much better.
Am I correct, Redwood Girl?

Answer 2

Just seeing this now. Yes, Mani, you are right -- in the original sentence, they are still looking forward to a (positive) resolution of the issue. It has not happened yet. So, kizhakke, your second version is not accurate first of all on that score.

Secondly, this rewritten version assumes that *they themselves* are the ones engaged in reaching this early settlement, which is not at all clear from the original sentence and might not be the case. They might be, and most likely are, awaiting settlement of this issue by a process in which they are only partially, or perhaps not at all, engaged in. Someone else might be making this decision, whatever it is.

Thirdly, you have shifted into the passive (not "they reached an early settlement," but "an early settlement was reached by them"), which sounds in this case rather awkward.

Now, in this change from adjective to adverb, I'm not sure whether your teacher is looking for something that modifies the sentence globally ("hopefully" used in the way that "clearly" might be, for example) or whether she is looking for something that applies only to the subject, "they."

If the former, you might do something like this --

Hopefully, they will see an early settlement of the issue.

But notice how much I have to tinker with the original.

If "hopefully" should instead apply -- as does "hopeful" now -- to these people themselves, describing their attitude, then you might have something like this --

They waited hopefully for an early settlement of the issue."


See the difference?

"Hopefully" in the global sense is still officially frowned upon in most quarters, even though you hear it in speech all the time. This particular sentence may be geared to getting you to see that when "hopeful" becomes "hopefully," it still (grammatically) ought to refer to the same subject.

Answer 3

Clearly", it seems "They are hopeful" is not used here "globally" because they do hope to settle the issue early and hence you answer "They waited hopefully for an early settlement of the issue" justifies the sense though "they" were made to "wait".

Redwood Girl, thanks for pointing out both the senses of the word "hopeful" which I never knew and thanks Mani Jha for chipping in...