Novial/AIL Adverbial Suffixes

Adverbial Suffixes

A certain number of adverbs of time, place, manner, etc., may very conveniently be formed by means of abbreviated substantives, thus:

time: -tem (for temp): nultem never, altritem at another time, at other times, omnitem always, irgitem ever.

place: -lok: omnilok everywhere, nuliloknowhere, altrilok elsewhere. Instead of, or by the side of, dislok, tilok, quilok we have the short hir, dar, vor from E here, there, where, D hier, da (dar, darin), wo (worin), Dan her, der, hvor. hence adj hiri, dari, cf. D hiesig. case: -kas (from kasu): omnikas in every case, tikas in that case, altrikas otherwise, irgikas anyway, etc.

degree: -grad: altigrad in a high degree, tigrad to that extent, kelkigrad to some extent, somehow, rather, pretty.

manner: -man (from ,manere but may also be considered an adaptation of F -ment I S -mente): omniman in every way, altriman in a different way, otherwise, nul(i)man in no wise, nobliman, severiman severely, etc.

When manner is not expressly denoted, this -man may be further shortened into -m; as this is added to the adjective ending -i, the result is -im, which is a common Latin adverbial ending. Privatim privately, separatim, partim are good Latin and regular Novial adverbs. Other examples: solim only, altrim else, nulim not at all, bonim well, spesialim, sinserim, totim completely, samim as well.

Anglim in English, fransim, germanim, etc.

A distinction may be made between naturim of course, naturalim naturally (in consequence of a person's nature), naturaliman in a natural manner.

Talim thus, in this way, and qualim how are more immediately comprehensible than the equally regularly formed timan and quiman, and therefore preferable. Quantim how much (adverbially, thus different from Quantum).

Adverbs in -im from substantives: instantim at once, noktim at night, memorim from memory, by heart.

With regard to the use of adverbs Esperantists should be warned not to follow the specially Zamenhofian rule (caused by a Polish idiom), according to which the adverb is required in the so-called impersonal sentences: estas necese diri `it is necessary to say.' The predicative according to all grammar must here be an adjective: the subject is the infinitive, which is a kind of verbal substantive. Z's rule blots out the distinction between `it is clearly necessary' and `it is necessarily clear.'

In the derived adverbs mentioned here it is a consequence of the principle of value-stressing that one naturally feels inclined to stress the first element: núltem, tíkas, ómnilok, áltriman, áltrim, etc.