For example, Hopefully, he will save money for the deposit on a new house'' can mean either that it is hoped that he will save the money (in which ''hopefully'' is a sentence adverb modifying the entire sentence) or that he is saving money in a hopeful manner (in which ''hopefully'' modifies ''will save''). The dispute over the use of sentence adverbs is born largely of the fact that in using an existing adverb to apply to not only one verb but a whole sentence, the meaning of the word is altered, which, in certain situations, can lead to ambiguity.
126–49 ''Merriam-Webster, on the other hand, calls the usage "entirely standard", and notes that it has been used since the early 18th century, having been commonly used in American English since the 1930s, and gained significant popularity in the 1960s. Stanley Whitley, "''Hopefully'': A Shibboleth in the English Adverb System", ''American Speech'', (58) 2 (Summer 1983), pp. Unlike for many such shifts in meaning that occur in English, the portion of the ''American Heritage Dictionary'''s Usage Panel that condones the second sense of the word has decreased from 1969 to 2000, offering the explanation that this particular usage has become a shibboleth. Many adverbs are used as sentence modifiers with somewhat less frequent objection such as interestingly'', ''frankly'', ''clearly'', ''luckily'', and ''unfortunately''. Usage notesThe second definition (“I hope that”, used as a ( sentence adverb)) has been criticized by some usage writers although it is by far the most commonly used sense of the word.
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