Adverbs

Within a multi-authored, four-volume work on historical Latin syntax, the chapter deals with the whole issue of adverbs in Latin. After discussing their status as a major lexical category and the different productive derivational devices, the main focus is on the wide syntactic and semantic polyfunctionality of the category. Different sections are dedicated to the adverb uses respectively as predicate modifiers, sentence modifiers, modifiers of adjectives/adverbs and autonomous predicates. The most extended part concerns the multi-faceted subcategory of sentence modifiers, which usually receives little attention as such in traditional Latin grammars. This function is commonplace for adverbs in modern European languages, but, interestingly, is much less widespread in Latin, regarding both the number of items involved and their textual frequency. Nevertheless, instances of most – if not all – subclasses of sentence modifiers are provided and discussed in the chapter, adding some considerations on the diachronic directionality of the semantic developments involved. In a further section, two syntactic properties of the adverb phrase are treated: coordination and argument structure. The latter leads to the consideration of the adverb–preposition continuum, with its diachronic implications in terms of grammaticalization. Finally, a further diachronic perspective is taken in the last section, which discusses the grammaticalization path that gave rise to the full renovation of the adverb word class in Romance languages.