As far as I know, "quickly" has been the adverb form and "quick" the
adjective form for some time now.

Dictionaries often list "quick" as a colloquial adverb only and not a formal
one.

However, when I work with ESL students, I tell them that the boundaries
between colloquial, informal, and standard are quickly blurring in regards
to (among other things) the -ly suffix. I believe that one can say things
like, "You got here quick" and "He got away as quick as possible" without
being marked as colloquial in many discourse circles.

I suppose that the morphological marker carries less and less meaning and
importance as English develops. When the -ly marker stops being critical for
communication and starts just being a part of an ettiquette checklist, it
will go away entirely, like so many of its morphological ancestors.

John Alexander

On Thu, May 14, 2009 at 6:56 PM, Brett Reynolds <[log in to unmask]>wrote:

>
> On 14-May-09, at 6:57 PM, John Alexander wrote:
>
> I've been amazed at the loss of the derivational suffix -ly that routinely
> marks adverbs.
>
>
> Is this a change? Some words, such as *quick* have always had both the *
> -ly* version and the plain one available as adverbs. Or do you mean
> something else?
>
> Best,
> Brett
>
> -----------------------
> Brett Reynolds
> English Language Centre
> Humber College Institute of Technology and Advanced Learning
> Toronto, Ontario, Canada
> [log in to unmask]
>
>
>
>
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