Chapter 146Adverbs, Degree, and Comparison

146.1 Adverbial modification

Adverbs express time, manner, degree, and other circumstances of a predicate. Nakagawa distinguishes ordinary adverbs from postpositional adverbs that take an antecedent or person marker. In his account, a completed adverbial phrase has zero arity; the postpositional word has one place to be filled by its antecedent Nakagawa (2024: 273, 280, §§6.1, 6.3).

Basic forms include temporal esir ‘a short time ago’, manner arorkisne ‘quietly, secretly’, and degree sonno ‘truly’. Nakagawa also includes negative and interrogative adverbs, among them makanak ‘how’ and hempara ‘when’ Nakagawa (2024: 273–275).

146.2 Derived and converted adverbs

Many property and state predicates form an adverb with -no: pirka ‘good’ has pirkano ‘well’, and pon ‘small’ has ponno ‘in a small way’. Nakagawa records both poronno and porono from poro. He regards the boundary between this formation and connective no as difficult to draw Nakagawa (2024: 275–276).

Some predicates also occur adverbially without -no. The published Saru examples use both tunas and tunasno for getting up early Nakagawa (2024: 276, examples 349–350). For clause-sized modifiers, see Chapter 137 (Manner, Appearance, Degree, and Comparison).

Directional formations have additional structure. Nakagawa analyzes e-/o- with ‘head/butt’ meanings, a positional noun, and ne or un; a second series combines he-/ho-, a positional noun, and asi. Thus his tables include ekimne ‘toward the mountains’ and okimne ‘from the mountains’. Some of these forms also function as person-marked verbs: his Chitose k=ekimne means ‘I go into the mountains’ Nakagawa (2024: 277–279, Tables 68–69 and example 357).

146.3 Postpositional adverbs and their antecedents

The antecedent of os ‘after’ can be an overt noun phrase, a person marker, or a participant supplied by context. In the next example i= identifies the person followed into the house Nakagawa (2024: 280, examples 362–364).

Transitive verbs supply many postpositional adverbs, including ani ‘by means of’ and tura ‘with’. Their patterns are partly lexical: tura also has turano, whereas Nakagawa rejects an analogous ani-no. He also notes exceptional subject marking in a=opitta ‘all of us’ Nakagawa (2024: 276–277, 281).

These expressions differ from place particles. Nakagawa's kari can follow ‘bridge’ or ‘window’ directly, while peka requires an expression of grammatical place, sometimes supplied by a positional noun Nakagawa (2024: 282).

146.4 Comparison, equality, and particular intensity

Refsing describes Shizunai comparisons with akkari ‘than’, leaving the property predicate unchanged. Her koraci example expresses similarity of behavior: a human will speak like a human Refsing (1986: 169–170, §14.5.6).

Bugaeva describes an equivalent of an equative construction with pak(no). Its predicate is often an ‘exist’ or isam ‘not exist’; the compared property can modify the noun or remain implicit. Size is implicit in this narrative example Bugaeva (2015: 54–55, §5.1).

Tamura's dictionary gives iyotta the range ‘particularly, most, extremely’. Its example tanike iyotta pirka can mean ‘This one is best’, but the entry explicitly cautions against treating iyotta simply as a grammatical superlative Tamura (1996: s.v. iyotta).