Adverbial morphology in German
This article is concerned with a morphological well defined subclass of words, which are usually considered to be adverbs: <i>-weise-</i>formations, like <i>wechselweise</i> (‘alternately’), <i>flaschenweise</i> (‘in (single) bottles/a lot of’), <i>glücklicherweise</i> (‘fortunately’), or <i>lesenderweise</i> (‘?in a reading manner/while reading’). Based on the assumption that <i>-weise</i> and <i>-erweise</i> should be treated as two different suffixes, the former attaching to nouns, the latter attaching to adjectives and participles, certain hitherto neglected uses of the suffixes are investigated. A subgroup of nominal -weise-formations can be used as quantifying determiners (<i>mit kiloweise Schminke</i> ‘with a lot of make-up’), and some adjectival <i>-erweise</i>-formations function as manner adverbials (<i>biertrinkenderweise</i> ‘?in a beer drinking manner/while drinking beer’). We argue that the overall function of the suffixes is to make possible different types of manner adverbial readings and in cases where this is not needed a sentence adverbial reading developed.
