adverbian

Adverbian is a constructed language designed as a thought experiment in linguistic typology. It is meant to explore the idea of adverbs as the primary carriers of predication, with semantic content such as manner, time, degree, evidentiality, and modality encoded largely through adverbial forms rather than through verbs or adjectives alone. The language is used in academic discussions and speculative-fiction contexts to study how information packaging influences syntax and discourse.

History and status: Adverbian originated in the late 20th century as a project within a multidisciplinary linguistic studies program. It has a fully described grammar and lexicon but no native speaker community, existing instead as a tool for analysis, demonstration, and storytelling within conlang circles and scholarly writing.

Phonology and writing: The phonology features a modest inventory of vowels and consonants with no phonemic tone distinction. The writing system uses the Latin alphabet with a small set of diacritics to indicate emphasis and evidential nuance. Orthography is largely phonemic, aiming for straightforward representation of adverbial forms.

Morphology and syntax: The language is analytic with minimal inflection. The basic word order is subject–verb–object (SVO). Predication relies on clusters of adverbs that precede or accompany the verb phrase, expressing manner, time, degree, mood, and epistemic stance. Auxiliary particles encode tense and aspect, while adjectives are subordinate to adverbial usage. Adverbs form a closed class, with derivational processes that yield distinctions in manner, frequency, certainty, and evidentiality. Noun phrases feature limited marking for definiteness and referent class, but most complex meaning is carried by adverbials.

Sample usage: A representative sentence would emphasize the adverbial layer, for example describing how a speaker explains a concept clearly and rapidly, with the core semantic load carried by the adverbial modifiers.