Re: USAGE: "Laughingly":What part of speech is it?

Carlos Thompson wrote:

> De: Gerald Koenig <jlk@...>
> Fecha: Viernes 2 de Octubre de 1998 17:11
>
> >I'd like to know a little more about the grammar of a gerund that is
> >changed into an adverb . I'm going to make a gender changer that changes
> >a root or infinitive verb to a corresponding adverb for vector tense.
> >I want to say things like,
> >
> >He goes walkingly to the store.
> >
> >Obviously this isn't great english, but for some reason,
> >
> >He said laughingly that he didn't mean it.
> >
> >seems ok.
> >
> >Any information about these  gerund-adverbs would help me.
> >Thanks,
> >
> >Jerry
> >
> Is not the gerund an adverb.  At least in both the English I know and in
> Spanish the gerund acts as an adverb.  The present or active participe, by
> other way, is an adjective.  In English there is no morfological difference
> between the active participe and the gerund (the -ing form).
>
> If gerund is an adverb, then wakingly is the adverbation of an adverb.
>
> ... hmmmm...
>
> -- Carlos Th
>
I once started writing an article call "Taming the Wild Gerund" but gave up on
it, as the gerund proved to be too wild to be tamed.  A gerund certainly isn't
an adverb, otherwise there wouldn't be a film called "The Shining".  In
English, at any rate, adding -ing just seems to make it a rather vague part of
speech whose behaviour depends on syntactic and semantic context e.g.

They objected to my laughing - verb-like noun
I am laughing - adjective-like verb
A laughing hyena - verb-like adjective-like compound noun ?!

The nice thing about conlangs is that you can make up your own parts of speech,
rather than worrying about the often confusing parts of natlangs!

Robin Turner