In this article, I try to demonstrate that the distribution of manner adverbs can be accounted for in the framework of a fine grained lexicoconceptual analysis font face Manner adverbs are of two kinds : first, they can refer to inherent properties of verbal predicates, and in this case they are restricted to active predicates, since only aconttive predicates have a complex internal structure, which is a condition for nouns as well as verbs to be qualified, by adjectives or manner adverbs ; second, they can refer to properties inherited by the predicate from its subject, if the subject bears an agentve or protoagent ive r. The fact that certain properties of the subject may be inherited by the predicate explain why certain stative verbs (verbs of sentiment, for instance) admit manner adverbs.