Now that we have the theory out of the way, adverbs—whether words, phrases, or clauses—aren’t going to be too bad, for either Isian or Ardari. We already got a glimpse of them in both languages, back in the Babel Text, but now it’s time to see them for real.
Isian
As always, we start with Isian. As you may recall, Isian adjectives normally can’t appear without a head noun. Well, now they can, and that’s how we make most adverbs.
In Isian, we use postpositions, and the postposition hi is our go-to for adverbs. It’s the equivalent of English -ly, Spanish -mente, and so on, making adverbs out of adjectives. Examples might include ichi hi “beautifully” (from ichi) or bil hi “well” (from bil “good”, with no stem change like in English). Couldn’t be simpler.
We can fit these into sentences by placing them just about anywhere. Just before or just after the verb phrase are the most common, though. An example might be sha seri ichi hi “she sings beautifully”, which could also be written sha ichi hi seri.
Little hi can also work for phrases, with almost the same meaning. Take the sentence mi doyan hi cheren im “I see him as my brother”. Granted, it’s a little on the metaphorical side, but it illustrates the point. (You can write this one as cheren im mi doyan hi if you like, but that way emphasizes the object “him” rather than the adverbial phrase.)
For full clauses, we need a little bit more grammar. First, we have the general conjunction ha, which introduces adverbial clauses. In certain informal situations, we don’t have to put it in, but it’s mandatory otherwise. Second, since Isian uses postpositions, it also has “clause-final” conjunctions. Thus, the words that would translate as “before”, “after”, and so on appear at the end of the phrase, not the beginning, as in English.
These two rules cover most of what we need to know, and we can already make quite a few clauses. Here’s a couple of examples:
- is hamas ha is inamas pane, “they ate before they went to sleep”
- mit las an wasanda ha is likhas mida todo, “we couldn’t go because they wouldn’t let us”
- em cosata ha cheren es abradi terta, “I came to see the mountains”
For all subordinate clauses like this, Isian’s default is independent. Dependent clauses are only allowed in a few cases, namely those of purpose or cause. (Desire or wanting, using the verb doche, allows dependents, too, but that’s not really an adverbial.)
To construct a dependent clause, all you need to do is use the infinitive form of the verb, which is the bare verbal stem (or 3rd-person singular present, which has the same form) preceded by cu. Thus, we might have cu chere “to see” or cu lenira “to read”. From there, the clause mostly follows English rules, except that the conjunction goes at the end, if it’s there at all.
Of our examples above, only the third can be rewritten as a dependent: em cosata cu chere es abradi. The first indicates time, which isn’t allowed to be “deranked” in this fashion, while the second has different subjects in the main and subordinate clauses. (Like English, we only get to use the infinitive version when the subjects would be the same.)
Ardari
Ardari, curiously enough, starts out easier than Isian: adjectives can be used as adverbs directly. They don’t inflect like this; they’re just…there. An example is ti ojet ajanga “she sings sweetly”.
Strictly speaking, Ardari doesn’t have simple adverb phrases, so we’ll skip ahead to the clauses. For this conlang, there’s a distinction in those. “Purpose” clauses (along with “wants” and perception, though these aren’t adverbial in nature) are always dependent, but everything else is normally independent.
These two groups are distinct in their position, as well. Dependents always precede the head verb, while independents are allowed to follow it, one of the few flaws in Ardari’s head-final nature. But independent clauses can be moved around freely, even fronted, like in English.
If that weren’t bad enough, adverbial clauses of time can appear in either form. In speech, it’s considered better to use the dependent form unless you absolutely need them at the beginning of the sentence. Writing prefers independents, mostly at the end of the sentence.
Okay, but how do we do it? For the independent clauses, there’s almost nothing to do. Put the adverbial clause after the main one, then put the appropriate conjunction at the end: my syne zejman anyerodyill salmotya byu, “I’ll give you these because I love you”. Since Ardari is otherwise head-final, the simple fact that something follows the verb is a sign that we have an adverbial clause.
Dependents are a little harder, but not much. As with Isian, we need an infinitive verb. For Ardari, it’s the verb stem followed by ky: dyem ky “to buy”, ivit ky “to see”. This goes at the end of the clause, followed by the normal conjunction: my fèse dyem ky chinod, “I went to buy food”.
Of course, there’s a slight problem of ambiguity that could crop up here. Because these clauses appear before the verb, with nothing to mark them off as special, we don’t really know when they start. In practice, though, it’s not that bad. Context helps. (Plus, it’s natural. No language is fully regular and unambiguous.)
Now, knowing all of this, we can get back to adverbial phrases. Ardari handles them like they were a special kind of dependent clause, using the infinitive form of the copula, èll ky: zall èll ky “like this”. (Perhaps in the future, this might evolve into an adverb-making suffix -èlky. Who knows?)
That’s it
Once again, it’s harder to describe something than to put it into action. That was the case with relative clauses a few weeks ago, and it’s the case today. But now we have adverbs, which fills in just about the last box in our list of parts of speech. Almost any kind of statement is possible now.
Next time, we’ll look at questions. Not the kind you certainly have, but the kind speakers of a language will be asking. We’ll see how they’re made and how we can make them.