In this chapter I will deal with several heterogeneous ‘adverb’ classes that have in common the fact that they modify events or states (i.e. verbs or adjectivals). The more traditional class of words called adverbs are relatable to question words like ‘how,’ ‘where,’ and ‘when,’ as adverbs of ‘manner,’ ‘place,’ and ‘time,’ respectively. Such words will be dealt with in the early parts of the chapter. Because some of the more paradigmatic temporal adverbs function also as locatives, they were treated in the section on locatives, §7.3. Adverbial phrases like at the place where the road forks will be treated in §10.3. Also in the current chapter I will treat the small class of words sometimes called intensifiers, words like ‘very,’ and a few others. Such words most commonly modify nominal modifiers.

In the greater part of this chapter I will deal with a special class of verbal modifiers that occur throughout the linguistic area in different forms and have been variously referred to in the South and Southeast Asian context as ‘expressives’ (Diffloth 1976), ‘intense action adverbials’ (Schultze 1987), and ‘reduplicative structures’ (Abbi 1985), just to name a few. I will adopt the term ‘expressive.’ Many expressives in Kham can be related to an original verbal source. Many can also serve as adjuncts in ‘light verb’ constructions, or as adjectives after derivation.

Adverbs of manner

Adverbs of manner typically modify the meaning of the verb alone, and as such are narrower in scope than other adverb types.