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Re: Innovative Adverb Formation

From:Pablo David Flores <pablo-flores@...>
Date:Saturday, July 13, 2002, 16:24
Christian Thalmann <cinga@...> writes:

> Rather than forming adverbs from adjectives by appending an ending, I > can use a generic adverbial phrase head |naw| meaning approximately "in > a way, in a fashion". So: > > > |fom| "hot" > |naw fom| "hotly" (lit: in a hot way)
Bokuchi Rinu-Khai does a similar thing (since they don't have a "like" preposition). lea yizun yue lea yi-zun-0 yue black GEN-way-CON night black in-way-of night = black like night sach dafele gozun azurama sach dafel-e go-zun azuram-a that dance-PRS COM-way disrespectful-NDF (s/he) dances with-way disrespectful [as in "disrespecting of tradition"] As you see, the latter (adverbial) prefers the COMmitative case, while the first (adjectival) uses the GENitive. The CONstruct case goes mostly unnoticed. The second example may be rephrased, using a different word, like this: sach dafele gufot urami sach dafel-e g-ufot uram-i that dance-PRS COM-opposite_way ancient-DEF = she dances counter-the-ancient-way-ly (|ufot| is the somewhat difficult to gloss antonym of |zun|). Christian, maybe you know this, but if you don't want to repeat the adverbial inflection on each adjective, you could do what Spanish does: fría, lenta y solemnemente cold- slow- and solemn-ly though this is sound because the derivative |-mente| used to be an independent word. --Pablo Flores http://www.angelfire.com/ego/pdf/ng/index.html