Xjyuk

Triggered by this answer, I am curious: Are there languages that inflect adverbs for gender or noun class?

I have consulted the following two questions but the given inflections of adverbs in their answers are comparative/superlative and agreement in voice (passive):

1. Does any language conjugate adverbs?


2. Are there languages in which adverbs inflect?

Although adverb agreement is far from ubiquitous, it doesn't seem to be extremely hard to find examples of it. I am most familiar with examples of gender-agreeing adverbs from Indo-European, since that is a large and well-studied family containing many languages with gender systems. But there do seem to be examples from other language families as well.

Indo-European examples

Some Indo-European languages have words that show gender agreement despite being analyzed as adverbs in certain contexts.

Adverbs modifying adjectives

One situation where this shows up is with adverbs modifying adjectives: there are some adverbs that show gender agreement with the adjectives that they modify, which in turn show agreement with the nouns that they modify. All of the examples that I have seen so far of this type of adverb gender agreement seem to be limited to particular words or particular contexts: I don't know of a language that systematically shows gender agreement for all adverbs that are modifying adjectives.

The specific example I know best is French [tu] (masculine form) 'all': the feminine form [tut] is found in phrases like "une galerie toute petite" and "des galeries toutes petites", where it shares its gender with the feminine adjective petite 'small' and feminine noun galerie 'gallery' (examples taken from "The Principle of Phonology-Free Syntax: four apparent counterexamples in French", by Miller, Pullum and Zwicky, 1996).

I referred to the pronounced forms rather than the spelling of the French adverb because the standard spelling of this word is rather complicated and perhaps artificial: Miller, Pullum and Zwicky argue that the number agreement that is present in the standard spelling of "des galeries toutes petites" does not actually exist as part of the grammar of non-written French. Such number agreement is not found when the adverb is in a position where liaison (morphologically conditioned pronunciation before a vowel-initial word of a word-final consonant that is not pronounced in most contexts) occurs; instead, the word is spelled tout and pronounced [tut] in this context.

Apparently, in Spanish mucho can show gender agreement (taking the form mucha) as an adverbial modifier of a feminine singular adjective, but it does not show agreement in either gender or number with plural adjectives ("Gender agreement on adverbs in Spanish", Antonio Fábregas & Isabel Pérez).

This next part is not directly relevant to your question (because it doesn't involve gender agreement), but the French and Spanish examples remind me of the use in English of many as an adverb in the expressions "many more" and "many fewer" ("much fewer" is also used). French tout/toute, Spanish mucho/mucha, and English much/many are all quantifiers that have common pronominal and adnominal uses in addition to their uses as adverbs. They don't belong to the language's main productive category of morphologically marked adverbs (-ly in English, -ment in French, -mente in Spanish).

Adverbs modifying verbs

"Adverb Agreement in Urdu and Sindhi", by Miriam Butt, Sebastian Sulger,
Mutee U Rahman, and Tafseer Ahmed, discusses another construction where a manner adverb based on an adjective may show gender agreement with a noun while modifying a verb. In addition to the two languages mentioned in the title of the paper, Butt et al. cite Punjabi and Southern Italian dialects as languages that have gender-agreeing adverbs of this type (as well as non-agreeing adverbs).

Daghestanian examples

Butt et al. briefly mention the existence of adverbs that show agreement in gender/noun class in Daghestanian languages.

In Daghestanian, adverbs agree with either the agent (e.g., in Archi) or the patient (e.g., in Avar) (Evans 2000, Kibrik 1979).

• In the Archi example in (5) the adverb dītaru ‘early’ agrees in (feminine) class ii
  and singular number with buwa ‘mother’, the agent of the overall predicate.




• (It cannot agree with dez ‘me’ since dative NPs are generally not available for
  agreement).

 (5) buwa dez dītaru x̄ₒalli 
 mother:ii:sg:nom 1:ii:sg:dat early:ii:sg bread:iii:sg:nom 

 barʃi erdi
 bake:ger:iii:sg aux:ii:sg

‘Mother was baking me the bread early.’ (Kibrik 1979, p. 70)

• In the Avar example in (6) the adverb xar ‘here’ agrees in (non-human) class iii and plural number with ‘icalgi ‘apples’, the patient of the overall predicate

(6) ṛex xar dedebe ‘icalgi
 3:ii:sg:erg here:iii:pl father:iii:pl:dat apple:iii:pl:nom 

roʃun ro‘a
buy:iii:pl aux:iii:pl

‘She was buying father the apples here.’ (Kibrik 1979, p. 76)

(pp. 2-3)

In Bantu languages, adverbs are often inflected for noun cl. 8, for example Shona ndakáryá zvi-díkí "I ate a bit" with the cl 8 form of "small" (-díkí), Swahili unaongea kiswahili vi-zuri "you speak Swahili well", cl. 8 form of "good" (-zuri). I do not know of any evidence that agreement propagates from adverbs ("very" is non-agreeing).