Re : Distinction between adjectives and adverbs

Dans un courrier daté du 21/06/00 21:56:28  , Jim a écrit :

> Hi, all,
>
>  AFAIK, you don't need a morphological distinction;   adverbs and adjectives
>  can have the same endings or lack thereof.   I think there always has to be
>  some syntactic distinction, though, between modifying a noun and modifying
a
>  verb.    That is, unless the language in question happens to be Allnoun.
>  :-)
>
>  Jim
i still find it handy to make a difference between a quality determining
a process&state or that of an entity because sometime adjectives
apply to both.

like in "deadly weapon", "deadly" refers to the use of the weapon.
in "a wise general", "wise" refers to the general as an actor of the activity
of commanding armies, but it could also just mean that the person is
wise generally speaking.

"you play tennis well" is not quite the same as "you play tennis, which
is good". in the first instance "well" refers to how the process works
and in the second "good" qualify the entity of "playing tennis".

a lot of adjectives refer to both an entity or a process&state, so it's an
important aspect of cross-reference and "ambiguity of language".

in my conlangs i usually allow myself to make adjectival adverbs
(good-ly) and adverbal adjectives (well-y).

mathias