![]() The Spanish forms ante and antes both derive from Latin ante (‘before’), which functioned either as an adverb or preposition. Still others kept both forms creating doublets, e.g., the adverbs quizá and quizás (‘perhaps’), which both express uncertainty or possibility and, according to the Diccionario Panhispánico de Dudas ( Real Academia Española 2005, s.v. 1 Eventually, while some adverbs maintained their analogous – s (e.g., entonces, mientras), other longer forms disappeared, particularly during the Middle Ages (e.g., fueras, nunquas). ![]() Since a number of Spanish adverbs of Latin origin already ended in – s (e.g., magis > más, ‘more’ laxius > lejos, ‘distant’ foras > fueras, ‘outside’, ‘except’), by means of analogy in Old Spanish the – s was added to other adverbs that originally lacked this final consonant (e.g., in tunc > entonces, ‘so’ dum interim > domientre > demientre > mientras, ‘while’ numquam > nunqua > nunquas, ‘never’) ( Azofra Sierra 2014, p. However, in Old Spanish the adverbial function could also be explicitly marked by a final – s. ![]() ![]() This suffix originally was a Latin noun, mens (‘mind’), used in the ablative case to indicate the state of mind of someone, and subsequently the way in which an action was performed ( Penny 2004, p. Currently, the only productive means to form an adverb in Spanish is by way of the suffix – mente, which is added to the female form of the adjective ( lento > lentamente, ‘slow’ > ‘slowly’).
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |