| Summary: | Adverbs as a lexical class appear not to have received much
attention in the study of African languages (Saah 2004) and Bantu
languages in particular (cf. Nurse and Philippson 2003). This paper
is an attempt at contributing to the knowledge of adverbs by
providing their description in terms of the morphological structure,
functions, and syntax in the Bantu language Kinyakyusa
(M31). Findings point out that the adverbs in the language are
realised by particles example ka-nunu 'well', as individual lexical
items, like bwila 'always', reduplication of words e.g. panandi
panandi 'very slowly' or word groups e.g. amasiku ga nkyeni
'in the coming days'. Also we found that the major clusters of
adverbs existing in the language designate manner, frequency,
magnitude, size-of-groups, location, and time. The syntax surrounding
their co-occurrences observes restriction to the hierarchy:
manner /frequency> magnitude/ size-ofgroups
>location/temporal
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