Adverbs as word class category in modern Greek language

The aim of the present article is to summarize the data about adverbs as a word class in modern Greek language. The study set the following tasks: to consider the definitions of an adverb given by different authors; to analyze semantic classifications of adverbs in traditional formal descriptive grammar and functional communicative grammar; to identify the basic problems of the description of adverbs; and to differentiate the notions of adverb and adverbial. The study draws on the functional communicative and comparative methods and takes into account the previous achievements of Russian linguists. The paper includes the review of the works of modern Greek linguists (G. Babiniotis, T. Nakas), as well as the linguists of the first half of the XX century (A. Tzartzanos, M. Triantafillidis). The issue is being investigated from the historical prospective with the help of the diachronical approach: the authors analyzes the definitions of the notion of adverb and the systematization of various semantic groups of adverbs in the early grammar texts of the Greek language (Hellenistic grammarian Dionysius Thrax, the Stoic school). The problem of streamlining such a complicated and diverse grammatical word class as adverbs still remains relevant. The novelty of the research lies in the first attempts to systemically describe Greek adverbs in comparison with Russian adverbs. Modern linguists came to the conclusion that adverbs as a word class have a field structure. Every field has a center (nuclear zone) and peripheral parts. This gives a possibility to systematize all the adverbs, adverbial expressions, and polyfunctional lexems on a non-controversial basis taking into account their semantics and syntactical function, and identify their nuclear, perinuclear and peripheral zones.