Re: adjectives and adverbs

Hello!

On 6/5/05, Carsten Becker <naranoieati@...> wrote:

[snip]

> *Usual* adverbs are like
> adjectives that refer to verbs instead of nouns. In French,
> most adverbs end in -(e/am)ment, in English usually in -ly
> and German does not make a difference between adjectives
> and adverbs, though adverbs are not inflected for case,
> gender and number as adjectives are.
Which reminds me: Finnish has "ad-adjectives" (modifying adjectives)
in addition to "normal" adjectives (modifying nouns) and adverbs
(modifying verbs). Does anyone know if there are other languages
(natlangs or conlangs) that do this kind of thing, or something
similar (i.e. use clearly distinct kinds of adverbs for modifying
different parts of speech, or different parts of a sentence)?

Here's an example with _hirveä_ "terrible":

- used as an adjective: _hirveä sotku_ "a terrible mess", inflected
  along with the noun it modifies (_hirveällä sotkulla_ "with a
  terrible mess", and so on)

- as an adverb: _en pidä hirveästi tomaateista_ "I don't really (lit.
  terribly) like tomatoes", not inflecting

- as an ad-adjective: _hirveän iso_ "terribly big", not inflecting
  (even when the adjective it modifies is inflected, as in _hirveän
  isossa salissa_ "in a terribly big hall")

(Of course there are also lots of adverbs that have no corresponding
adjectives or ad-adjectives, such as "today", "never", "outdoors" etc.
But adverbs from this group don't seem to have corresponding
adjectives in many languages anyway...)

>  > So the question is: Would that kind of word be really an
>  > auxiliary or would it simply be an adverb that conjugates
>  > in TAM and person?
>
> Add: How would I inflect adverbs for case? Ayeri does that,
> at least I try to but I always get into trouble, since
> adverbs refer to verbs not to nouns.
Well, sometimes adverbs refer to verbs (as in "he snores loudly"), but
sometimes they refer to adjectives (as in "a terribly loud snore") or
even to other adverbs ("he snores terribly loudly"). That is, if the
language in question doesn't have special ad-adjective (or ad-adverb)
forms. :-)

In those cases where an adverb refers to an adjective, maybe it could
be inflected for case in the same way as the adjective it refers to?
Then you'd end up with something like "terrible.adv.nomsg loud.nomsg
snore.nomsg" for my example "(a) terribly loud snore" above... Would
that make sense in the context of Ayeri grammar?

Regards,
Julia

--
   Julia Simon (Schnecki) -- Sprachen-Freak vom Dienst
_@"  schnecki AT iki DOT fi / helicula AT gmail DOT com  "@_
si hortum in bybliotheca habes, deerit nihil
                                        (M. Tullius Cicero)

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