Re: adjectives and adverbs

Hi!

# 1 <salut_vous_autre@...> writes:
> I have a little question about Adverbs
>
> In Vbazi, the adjectives are verbs that are "to be ---" when stative and "to
> become ---" when active
>
> But yesterday, I wanted to create adverbs since I never passed through these
> things up to then.
>
> I first thought of the most simple ones: "a lot", "well"... and realised I
> already gave these meanings to auxiliaries
The two categories are very closely related in some languages.

> So I thought of making all the adverbs with auxiliaries that take the verb's
> ending and let the verb unchanged
Ok.

> 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?
Auxilary, *since* it conjugates.

> Oh! and an extra question: Is it an ANADEWism? have the whole set of adverbs
> in auxiliaries?
In Mandarin Chinese, it's often hard to tell.  I noticed this in a
construction that is different in German and English:

  English:    I like to drink beer.        auxiliary 'to like'
  German:     Ich trinke gerne Bier.       adverb 'gerne'

Now, in Mandarin Chinese, this cannot (easily) be distinguished, since
it's a (mostly) isolating lang and adverbs and auxiliaries take the
same position in a clause:

   Mandarin:  Wo xihuang    he    pijiu.  auxiliary/adverb 'xihuang'?
              I  like.HABIT drink beer

(In 'I'd like to drink beer.' or 'Ich würde gerne Bier trinken', thus
the non-habitual clause, I'd probably use 'xiang3' in Mandarin -- a
different word.  Please someone correct my incomplete knowledge if I'm
wrong about the exact usage.)

It's really hard to tell.  In this case, 'xihuang' can be used as a
standalone full verb, but the word 'feichang' ('often') cannot, but it
still takes the same position:

   Mandarin:  Wo feichang he pijiu.       adverb 'feichang'
              I  often    drink beer.

Is the question whether words can be used as full verbs a distinction?
In English, auxiliaries cannot.  Just like adverbs.

Whether it even makes any sense to distinguish between adverbs and
auxiliaries in Mandarin is not clear to me.  I don't know how it's
handled in analyses of Mandarin Chinese, but as I see it, things like
'be able to / *to can' (German: 'können') cannot clearly be
categorised in Chinese:

   Mandarin:  Wo hui he    pijiu.
              I  can drink beer

But 'hui' cannot be used without a verb (just like 'feichang'), so is
it an adverb, then?  Probably it's just thinking in categories
inappropriate to that language.  Just call it 'verb modifier' (in case
'verb' is an appropriate category).

However, in your conlang's case, conjugation is a clear indication of
a verb, so I'd not call it an adverb.

**Henrik

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