Chapter 12 Adverbs and adverbial clauses
Adverbial expressions elaborate information regarding the state of affairs
expressed by the verb and its arguments, information such as temporality,
frequency, manner, purpose, instrumentality, and so on. This chapter details
lexical, phrasal, and clausal adverbial expressions.
1. Types of adverbial expressions
Few lexical items exist that one can unequivocally identify as adverb roots.
However, there are many nouns and adjectives that function adverbially and
there are some derived lexical items that function adverbially. These include
temporal, frequency, epistemic, manner, and degree expressions.
1.1 Temporal expressions
Expressions of time are largely nominal and adjectival. Nominal expressions
include:
nouns denoting time of day, e.g. laggu ‘morning’, seyang ‘midday’,
malem ‘night’,
nouns denoting specific days, e.g. ba'ari' ‘yesterday’, laggu' ‘tomor-
row’, dhaggu' ‘tomorrow’,
nouns denoting periods of time, e.g. jam ‘hour’, are ‘day’, bulan
‘month’, taon ‘year’,
names of days of the week, e.g., are Minggu ‘Sunday’, are Salasa
‘Tuesday’,
names of months and years, e.g. bulan Juni ‘June’, bulan Augustus
‘August’, taon sa'ebu sangatos sabidak lema' ‘ 1965 ’, taon dhu'ebu set-
tong ‘ 2001 ’, and
specific times and dates, e.g., kol lema' ‘five o’clock’, tangal tello polo
Juni dhu'ebu ballu' ‘30 June 2008’
Examples of these are given in (1-3).