'Adjektiboen' eta 'adberbioen' arteko muga zehatzik eza

Abstract

It is a well known fact, that somestimes the divisory line between two categories of the grammar is difficult to establish. Adjectives and manner adverbs are some of those problematic categories. Basque adverbs and adjectives has been characterized by using a functionnal criterion: modifiers of nouns are all considered as adjectives and modifiers ofverbs, adjectives and adverbs are all considered as adverbs.
   In this paper we criticize the resulting clasification of grammatical categories, showing that a lot of words belonging to the posposition phrase category have being included into both categories (adjectives and adverbs). Moreover, some words that are taken up as modifiers of the verb, actually have not such a function, since they behave as (subcategorized or secondary) predicates. Our claim is that the predicative function must also be taken into account. That leads us to claim that some words of Basque traditionally considered as adverbs display always a predicative behavior, which makes us consider them as adjectives.