Abstract
Abstract-. The development of the adverbs from Latin to the Romance languages raises the question of morphologization vs demorphologization. It also challenges the relevance of the category of adverb as a distinct part of speech. After a first part dedicated to a reassessment of the status of the Latin adverb and of its ties with the nominal system, this article analyses the innovations that brought to the emergence of new adverbial formations in Late Latin and Romance languages. One of those innovations is the spreading of the adverbs in -mente in the Romance languages and especially in Gallo-Romance. The testimony of the Reichenau Glosses (ca. 750) allows to consider the adverbs in -mente as a Gallo-Romance innovation that seems to reproduce with Latin linguistic material an adverbial construction well attested in High Old German. The diffusion of the adverbs in -mente in the other Romance languages (with the exception of Romanian) could be due to the influence of Old French exerted on Ibero-Romance and Italo-Romance languages throughout the Middle Ages and beyond.
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