word order - Semantics and frequency of use of different adverb orderings


Is there any semantic difference between these two sentences? Also, is any of them more "correct" or frequently used than the other?



This problem has been recently addressed by several authors



vs



This problem has recently been addressed by several authors




Answer



The second is more naturally English. The first feels like an attempt to wrestle the order into grammatical correctness, although it fails. The blackboard grammar version would have been:



This problem has been addressed recently by several authors



Note that the entire verb construct has been neatly drawn together, as if it were a single word in a complex conjugation. Note, too, that it is something you would never hear in spontaneous speech from anyone but a schoolteacher or that curmudgeonly pedant who, quite understandably, has little in the way of company.


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