A locative adverb is a type of

adverb An adverb is a word or an expression that generally modifies a verb, adjective, another adverb, determiner, clause, preposition, or sentence. Adverbs typically express manner, place, time, frequency, degree, level of certainty, etc., answering ...

that refers to a location or to a combination of a location and a relation to that location. Generally, a locative adverb is semantically equivalent to a prepositional phrase involving a locative or directional preposition. In English, for example, ''homeward'' is a locative adverb, specifying a location "home" and a relation "toward" (in this case a direction), and is equivalent to the phrase "toward home". The relation need not be a direction, as it can be any relation that can be specified by a locational preposition such as ''to'', ''from'', ''in'', ''at'', ''near'', ''toward'', or ''away from''. For example, the word ''home'' is itself a locative adverb in a sentence like "I took him home today" or "I found him home today"; in the former case, it is equivalent to the phrase "to home", and in the latter to the phrase "at home". Pro-form locative adverbs generally form a closed class and are particularly important in a language. Examples in English include ''there'' (meaning "at that place"), ''whither'' (= "to what place"), and ''hence'' (= "from this place"). As can be seen from the examples below, these anaphoric locative adverbs generally have a close relationship with the

demonstrative Demonstratives (abbreviated ) are words, such as ''this'' and ''that'', used to indicate which entities are being referred to and to distinguish those entities from others. They are typically deictic; their meaning depending on a particular frame ...

s (in English, ''this'' and ''that''). They are also usually closely related to locative

interrogative adverb An interrogative word or question word is a function word used to ask a question, such as ''what, which'', ''when'', ''where'', ''who, whom, whose'', ''why'', ''whether'' and ''how''. They are sometimes called wh-words, because in English most o ...

s; in English, there is (or, at least, once was) a formal relationship between "where/there/here", "whither/thither/hither", and "whence/thence/hence".

References

{{lexical categories Adverbs by type

See also

References