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2.4 Adverbial inflection
quickinfo

Many adverbs show degrees of comparison.

1
Jee japer man gruuf (...). ‘The deeper one dug (...).’; Iek wol die nit loanger moor apheelde. ‘I don’t wan’t to take up your time any longer.’

Supplementary comparative and superlative forms occur in:

2
ädder, eer, eerst ‘early, earlier, earliest’
3
jädden, ljower, ljoofst ‘happily, rather, preferably’

For example: mon kon eer nit fljoge dät me Fugge hät ‘one can’t fly (earlier) before one has got wings’. See also: 3 Adjectives (inflection).

Sentence or VP modifying adverbial phrases are constructed as ap t [A]-e or am [A]-e(n), see also: 3 Adjectives (inflection). For example: :

4
Ju sjungt ap ’t bääste. ‘She sings the best’. Mäd do Hollounder kuden wie uus am bäästen ap Platdüütsk ferstounde. ‘With the Dutch we could best communicate in Low German.’

Some quantifying adverbs apparently behave like adjectives with regard to inflection.

5
Do ganse oolde Wieuwljude. ‘The very old women.’ Dät was en gouden klouken Kärel. ‘That was a pretty smart guy.’ ’n oarigen groten Steen ‘a rather large stone’.

A few elative adverbs derived from adjectives end in a schwa.

6
Et waas al oarige djunkel. ‘It was already pretty dark.’ Iek waas aiske bliede. ‘I was very glad (cf. aisk ‘exquisite’).’

Some locative adverbs like binne ‘inside’, bute ‘outside’, unner ‘below’ receive an additional -n after the prepositions fon ‘from’ and ätter ‘towards’, e.g. fon buten ‘from the outside’, ätter binnen ‘to the inside, in’.

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