Re: adjectives -> adverbs

Tim Smith wrote:
>
> At 02:53 PM 3/20/99 +0100, Daniel Andreasson wrote:
> >Hello y'all!
> >
> >Lately I've been curious as to how adverbs are
> >formed out of adjectives.
> >
> >I know that in Swedish you use the neuter form
> >of adjectives, in English you use -ly, and in
> >German you don't do anything at all.
> >But there has to be more and cooler ways.
> >
> >I've been thinking about using an infix in my
> >conlang Rinya. ('Paeno' = good ; 'paenio' = well)
> >Or perhaps changing the last -o into -e.
> >
> >But then I run out of ideas. Do you guys know
> >of any cool way of doing this? There has to
> >be some unusual way in like African or Australian
> >languages for example.
>
> In two of my conlangs, Meitzanathein and Hwendaaru, this is done by
> nominalizing the adjective and then putting it in the instrumental case, so
> that, for instance, the equivalent of "happily" is something that could be
> translated literally as "with happiness".  I don't know of any natlangs that
> do this, but I'd be surprised if there aren't any.
>
> >Hope you can give me some ideas,
> >
> >Daniel Andreasson
> >da@mensa.se
> >http://hem1.passagen.se/noldo/
> >
> >
> -------------------------------------------------
> Tim Smith
> timsmith@global2000.net
>
> Get your facts first and then you can distort them as you please.
> - Mark Twain
Modern Hebrew has some varied and interesting ways of forming adverbs
from adjectives. In addition to simply using a simple adjective in the
masculine or feminine singular or feminine plural, almost all adjectives
can theoretically be made into adverbs by turning them into nouns and
prefixing "be-" meaning "with", although some of these words are common
and some very rare. For example, "bimhirut", (*be-mehirut) is synonymous
with "maher", "fast, quickly," and both words are common. One advantage
of making adverbs out of nouns made from adjectives is that you can then
modify them with another adjective or noun before making them adverbs,
as in Hebrew "bimhirut raba", "very quickly," literally "with great
speed" or "be-si ha-retsinut", "very seriously," literally "at the
height of seriousness."

The most interesting way of making some phrases which would possibly be
translated by -ly adverbs in English is by the phrase "from a
(adjective) perspective," which is very common. For example, "mi-bxina
mada?it," literally "from a scientific perspective," would be translated
into English as "scientifically" or "scientifically speaking," whereas
just "mada?it" by itself (which is simply an adjective with a feminine
singular ending) could mean "in a scientific manner" in addition to
"from a scientific perspective."

--
Adam Raizen

araizen@softhome.net