• is there a variety of meanings or just one core meaning for "hardly"?
• is "hard" more productive than "hardly" in its meaning potential?
• do you notice anything in terms of the parts of speech of the two words?

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• there are 225 instances of "hard" whereas "hardly" only has 71 instances which suggests that "hard" may be more productive than "hardly"
• "hard" seems quite productive in terms of its meaning potential - "hard" can be used to refer to something difficult, harsh, very solid, strong or unpleasant. It can also be used to talk about people who are very productive in some way or who are tough characters
• around 60% of the instances of "hardly" happened in written discourse while "hard" seems to be more associated with spoken language
• "hard" can be either an adjective or an adverb and sometimes its a noun
• "hardly" is always used as an adverb which may partly explain it's lower frequency

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