Abstract In Chinese, words like youshi (seldom), wangwang (usually) and zong (generally) are commonly considered frequency adverbs, on a par with words like ouer (rarely), changchang (often) and yizhi (always). It was discovered after analyzing large corpora data that the former are probability adverbs and only the later are frequency adverbs. Frequency and probability are the results of different calculations which require different items. A frequency adverb like the changchang (often) typically requires one set of things only, since the frequency for a given activity will remain constant no matter which time frame is adopted for the calculation. While in the case of probability adverbs, two sets are required for calculating probability. This is why using wangwang (usually) is not acceptable without a proper context More importantly, youshi (seldom), wangwang (usually) and zong (generally) are subjective adverbs that express the speaker's evaluation of the proposition. Such an evaluation is always against a baseline. The wangwang (usually) means the speaker thinks that the probability is close to the baseline, which should be the statistical average of 0.5. The youshi (probably) may be based on a statistic baseline but it could simply express the speaker's subjective opinion. The sentence "Ni zenme zong bu jie wode dianhua?" (How dare you not answer my call in general?) is a girl's whining against her boyfriend and her baseline for not answering her phone call is 0, a purely subjective decision.
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机译：摘要在中文中，通常把尤氏（通常），旺王（通常）和宗（一般）之类的词当作频率副词，与欧尔（很少），长场（经常）和义智（总是）这样的词相提并论。在分析大型语料库数据后发现，前者是概率副词，只有后者是频率副词。频率和概率是需要不同项目的不同计算的结果。像changchang这样的频率副词（通常）通常只需要一组事物，因为给定活动的频率将保持恒定，而不管采用哪个时间框架进行计算。对于概率副词，计算概率需要两组。这就是为什么在没有适当上下文的情况下通常不使用wangwang的原因。更重要的是，youshi（很少），wangwang（通常）和zong（通常）是主观副词，用于表达说话者对该命题的评价。这样的评估总是违背基线的。旺旺（通常）是指说话者认为概率接近于基线，该概率应为统计平均值0.5。优式（可能）可能基于统计基线，但是它可以简单地表达说话者的主观意见。句子“ Ni zenme zong bu jie wode dianhua？” （您一般不敢接听我的电话吗？）是女孩对男朋友的抱怨，她不接电话的基准是0，这纯粹是主观决定。
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