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Adverbs represent a heterogeneous group. The classification of adverbs delineated below follows the approach of Martinet.First of all, I have eliminated peripheral adverbs such as sentence adverbs, conjuncts or speech-act modifiers. To classify the remaining non-peripheral adverbs, I have used two criteria: functional relations between classes and mutual exclusion of the units which belong to the same class.These criteria result in five adverb classes: Degree adverbs, adverbs ending in - ment, adverbs able to modify nouns by the mean of the preposition de, adverbs able to modify nouns without the preposition de (focalizers), and the remaining set.The classification proposed here based on functional relations between classes and mutual exclusion appears to be compatible with other studies using semantic criteria.