On Mon, Nov 22, 2010 at 8:26 PM, bob therriault <[email protected]> wrote: > That the same adverb has three different actions depending > on the part of speech it modifies seems like a natural language > than a computer language (but that might be just my take). In any > case, it does introduce an extra level of variation beyond the > dyadic/monadic question, so it did seem that the function of > having nouns as arguments made adverbs more complex i.e. tricky.
I do not really understand what you mean when you say "three different actions depending on the part of speech it modifies". If you want to deal with their full generality: Adverbs can modify nouns or verbs. (That seems like two parts of speech.) Depending on their definition (and their argument, if that matters for their definition), they can produce a noun, a verb, an adverb or a conjunction. If you do not want to deal with their full generality, treating the typical case where they modify a verb and produce a new, derived verb, would seem to be worth highlighting. Of course, the verb itself can be used in a monadic verb context or a dyadic verb context. But that context is largely independent of the adverb. -- Raul ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm
