Spatial Adverbs in Laz

Abstract

Laz spatial adverbs are notional lexical items making up rather numerous and semantically diverse groups. They play a significant role in linguistic representation of spatial structures determining in which circumstances and with what features an action, conveyed by a verb, proceeds. They are satellites outside a verb stem; in sentences, they occur as adverbial modifiers and convey space-related information: direction of movement and place of localization of bodies. The function of an adverb is to establish: location of a figure when it is immobile, beginning of action, point of departure, orientation towards the final point of motion, either to determine a target point or convey terminativity, approaching that point . In Laz, adverbs occur as three different patterns:  Simple, that is, primary, basic patterns; Derived - patterns formed by means of case markers, particles, postpositions, preverbs and other affixes; Compound – by means of various types of reduplication. Formal structures of adverbs reflect their semantic structures; for instance, derived adverbs are sequences of functional elements, being associated with representation diverse structures of semantic components: direction and area, localization, starting, target and terminal points, arrangement of objects in an area, topology of place, widening-narrowing of an area, visualization, reference-orientation.