The adverb

Some OE adverbs are primary, that is, they have not been derived from any other part of speech, while others are secondary, derived from some other part of speech.

Among the primary adverbs there are many pronominal words, such as Þ a 'then' Þ onne 'then', Þæ r 'there' þ ider 'thither', hwonne 'when', hw æ r 'where', hwider 'whither', hwonan 'whence', nu 'now', her 'here', hider 'hither', heonan 'hence'. Here also belong the ad­verbs sona 'soon', oft 'often', eft 'again', swa 'so', etc.

Much more numerous are the secondary adverbs, derived from substantives or adjectives. Sometimes some case form of a substan­tive or an adjective becomes isolated from the declension system and becomes a separate word, the case ending becomes a derivative suffix or else it ceases to be a separate morpheme altogether.

Thus, the following adverbs originated from case forms of sub­stantives: hwilum 'sometimes' (from the dative plural of the sub­stantive hwil 'while'), as in: ða onZan ic... Da boc wendan on enZlisc... hwilum word be worde, hwilum ad it be andZiete 'then I began... to translate this book into English... sometimes word by word, sometimes meaning by meaning'.

An entire category of adverbs, those in -e, originated from the instrumental singular neuter, strong declension; the -e became a derivative suffix. Here belong such adverbs as wide 'wide­ly', deope 'deeply', fxste 'fast', hearde 'hard', freondlice 'in a friend­ly way'.

For the eventual development of adverbs in English a specific circumstance proved to be significant. In OE there was an adjective suffix -lic (coming from a substantive lic 'body'), a number of ad­jectives were derived by means of this suffix: e.g. luflic 'loving', freondlic 'friendly'. In some cases there existed parallel variants of an adjective with the suffix -lic and without it, as ZesxliZ and ZesxliZ lic 'blessed', and accordingly two parallel adverbs: ZesxliZe and ZesxliZ lice. Under these circumstances the adverb ZesxliZ licemight be interpreted as derived from the adjective ZesxliZ, that is, -lice might be interpreted as an adverb-forming suffix. This paved the way for deriving adverbs in -lice from adjectives which had no parallel variants in -lic. Thus, the adverb bealdlice “boldly” was derived from the adjective beald 'bold' though there was no adjective bealdlīc.

Дата добавления: 2013-12-14