Phraseology and Culture in English

5.
Reasonably as a near-equivalent of it is reasonable
In one of its meanings, the adverb reasonably is closely related to the 
adjective reasonable used in the frame ‘it is reasonable to (verb)’. The two 
do not mean exactly the same, but they are very close, and for present pur-
poses the differences between them can be ignored. For example, the clause 
“…what nurses can reasonably expect…” can be seen as equivalent in 
meaning to “…what it can be reasonable for nurses to expect.” 
Let us consider, then, the meaning of the frame ‘it is reasonable to 
(verb)’, with its modally and epistemically qualified variants (examples 
from COBUILD): 
it would be reasonable to suppose 
it seemed reasonable to assume 
it is reasonable to suppose 
it was quite reasonable to be worried 
it seems reasonable to say 
it is reasonable to speculate 
it seems reasonable to think 
it is reasonable to consider 
it is reasonable to ask 
it is reasonable to wonder 
As these examples illustrate, the frame ‘it is reasonable to…’ takes 
verbs which are predominantly verbs of thinking. Furthermore, it is, charac-

---

58
Anna Wierzbicka 
teristically, tentative thinking – thinking associated with the limitations of a 
person’s knowledge (collocations like “it is reasonable to suppose / assume / 
speculate” are more felicitous and certainly more common than, say, “it is 
reasonable to claim / assert / maintain”) (cf. Kjellmer 1994). The preva-
lence of the copula seem is consistent with this uncertainty: it seems good 
to think like this, but since one doesn’t really know one prefers to be cau-
tious and tentative. For the same reason, no doubt, the copula tends to be 
hedged: not just “it is reasonable” or even “it seems reasonable” but often 
“it would be reasonable” or “it would seem reasonable”. The tentativeness 
characteristic of the prevalent use of the frame ‘it is reasonable to…’ is also 
characteristic of the use of reasonable with the corresponding abstract 
nouns: “a reasonable hypothesis”, “a reasonable guess”, “a reasonable judg-
ment”. 
In addition to verbs of thinking (especially tentative ones), some verbs 
of speaking or feeling can also occur as complements of the frame ‘it is 
reasonable to…’, but only if they can be understood as implying thinking – 
either inherently (as in worry) or in the given context. For example, one can 
readily say “it is reasonable to ask why…” – implying that the speaker has 
thought about the possible reasons or causes. 
What does it mean, then, to say, that “it is reasonable to think (like 
this)”? First of all, there is a judgment concerning the compatibility of a 
given thought with someone’s ability to think well: in the speaker’s opin-
ion, a person who thinks well can think like this. This does not mean that 
the speaker necessarily endorses the view assessed as “reasonable”. Rather, 
he or she acknowledges that this view is consistent with an ability to think 
well – and stops there, denying any desire to go further in supporting that 
view: “I don’t want to say more”, that is, “I don’t want to say: it’s good to 
think like this”. 
At the same time, the epistemic reserve of the frame ‘it is reasonable 
to…’ does not commit the speaker to a position of complete uncertainty 
and a total lack of confidence. On the contrary, the phrase “it is reasonable 
to think” (even when modally qualified) implies a degree of confidence. 
Apparently, this sense of confidence comes from two sources. First, the 
speaker (“I”) has grounds for the expressed judgment – grounds which 
could if necessary be made explicit (“I can say why I think like this”). Sec-
ond, my judgment, fallible as it is, but also justifiable as it can, I think, be 
shared by other people – if these people consider the matter carefully (as, it 
is implied, I have done). 
These considerations bring us to the following explication: 

---

Reasonably well
59
I think that it is reasonable to think like this (about it) = 
a. I know some things about it 
b. when I think about these things well I think that it can be like this 
c. I can say why I think like this 
d. if someone else knows the same thing about it 
when they think about these things well they can think the same about it 
e. I don’t want to say more 
f. I don’t want to say: “it is like this ” 
Component (a) of this explication indicates that reasonable is linked with 
thinking; (b) shows that it lays claims to “thinking well”, and thus, indi-
rectly, to “reason” and to a potential consensus of people who can think 
well (component (d)); (c) refers to something like evidence (or grounds, or 
“reasons”); and (e) and (f) reflect the “moderate” and undogmatic character 
of the claims implied by reasonable.
It is particularly interesting to note that this use of reasonable as an epis-
temic hedge (“diminisher”, “downtoner”) appears to be a relatively recent 
development in English, and that a hundred or a hundred and fifty years 
ago a phrase like reasonable assumption did not imply the reserved non-
commitment which it does now. Examples like the following one (from the 
OED) can be misleading in this regard: 
…the reasonable assumption would be that this bullet would range a greater 
distance if projected at the same velocity. (1877) 
If reasonable as used here included the component ‘I don’t want to say more’ 
then it could hardly be used in the following sentence (also from the OED):
The conviction would be reasonable, for it would be based upon universal 
experience. (1877) 
In contemporary English, “convictions” can hardly be described as “rea-
sonable” – presumably because they are not compatible with the compo-
nent ‘I don’t want to say more’, which in the course of the last century and 
a half became incorporated in the word’s very meaning. 
As I have argued in more detail elsewhere (Wierzbicka in press a), while 
both rational and reasonable had their starting point in the concept of ‘rea-
son’, two centuries ago (if not earlier), their paths parted and reasonable
went its own way - in the direction of epistemic tentativeness and modera-
tion, and the adverb reasonably followed suit. I will discuss the background 
of this development in the next Section. 

---

60
Anna Wierzbicka