Tuesday, December 18, 2012

Detail #18: Weird things to do with adverbs

In some languages where adjectives are verb-like, let adjective-verbs form auxiliaries that mark all kinds of manner. Even permit numbers to form auxiliaries that mark "to do n times", or "to do the n:th time" or "to do to N objects" (in effect extracting the number from the object NP to the VP).

When many adverbs are called for, some may remain chained with the main verb, and if several are highly salient they can be coordinated with a shared complement VP along these lines:
John quicks and carelesses stack[infinitive] the books
John carelesses stack the books and quick
John carelesses stack the books quick
John stacks the books, carelesses and quicks
If the adverbial has little to do with the subject, they may take a dummy subject:
John's house burned down, [dummy] unfortunates. 
Maybe a causative would be nice there?
[dummy] unfortunate.causative.3sg John's house burned down.
Would maybe work best in a language where infinitives can mark subject agreement? Alternatively, a language where there is some but rather sparse verb morphology, e.g. something along the system in standard Swedish with an explicitly marked present tense distinct from the infinitive.

As for numbers, some pronouns could also work:
I many.1sg have ideas - I have many ideas, "I profusely have ideas"
You howmany.2sg run laps? - You ran how many laps?
They how.3pl.past? - How did they do it?

 On the other hand, if done badly - without making a really thought-through morphosyntax here, it would easily end up a silly way of marking things in the wrong place.

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