Pernilla Hallonsten Halling

moòtmoòt

slowly/caution

pee
not
ipòúi!
2sg.fall
adv

‘Slowly/caution that you may not fall!’


While speed is found among the simple adverbs of a fairly large number of languages, value, noise, and care are attested in much fewer languages. As noted, the languages in which the latter three types are found also have speed adverbs, with the exception of Hdi, which has value adverbs, but appears to lack speed adverbs. Both noise and care are found in languages with relatively many members in their simple adverb classes, just as in the case of value. Moreover, these semantic types occur among the simple adverbs of genealogically unrelated and geographically distant languages.




CARE adverbs no CARE adverbs
Figure 8.4. Languages with simple adverbs, with and without care

3. General modifiers

A third of the sample languages have what I call general modifiers (cf. section 6.4.4), i.e. property lexemes that are able to modify both within referring and predicating expres- sions. As discussed in chapter section 6.4.4, general modifiers are attested in the functions of attr, pred, and adv in the languages of the sample. There is only one marginal in- stance of a lexeme-level overlap of just attr and adv (see section 6.4.3). The languages with general modifiers differ in terms of whether this class is the only one attested in the functions of modification, or whether adjectives and/or adverbs can be found as well. The general modifier classes pattern with certain semantic types, as will be illustrated in the present section. When giving examples of general modifiers here, I primarily include attr and adv. This does not mean that these individual general modifiers are unable to occur in pred. Rather, examples of attr and adv are prioritized because I focus on general modifiers as covering the functions of attributive adjectives and adverbs. Here, their function of modification is parallel. At the end of the section, the semantic types attested among the general modifiers are summarized in a table.

Some languages have general modifiers as the only lexeme class in attr and adv. This is the case in Dutch (Indo-European). In attr, all Nouns except singular neuter ones without a preceding article trigger the agreement -e on the General Modifier. In all other cases, General Modifiers take the same bare form. The agreement found in most cases of attr thus stands out, and the three functions do not have quite identical encoding. But agreement is a type of behavioral potential according to Croft (2001: 91), expected to be attested for at least the most prototypical members of a category. Thus, I still consider this to be a class of General Modifiers, with behavioral potential in attr specifically.

(8.10) Dutch (Indo-European) (Donaldson 1997: 87)

1. 
   het
   

art