Re: Negation?

Patrick Dunn scripsit:

> Hrmm?  Explain this to me, please?  My Spanish is rusty.  I know adverbs
> can be made by casting the adjective into the feminine form and adding
> "-mente," but what was "-mente" originally, then, and why feminine form?
It's simply the noun "mente" = "mind", so "lentamente" is literally
"with slow mind".  Originally this was a phrase in the ablative case.

Curiously, the English equivalent "-ly" is a very much reduced form
of the OE noun "lic", meaning "body", plus an old adverbial ending "-e".
This "lic" survives only in "lich-gate" now, the gate into a churchyard
through which the body is brought during a burial service.
("Lich" is also the name of a nasty D&D monster.)

So in English adverbs are bodily metaphors, and in Romance, mental metaphors.

--
John Cowan                                   cowan@ccil.org
       I am a member of a civilization. --David Brin