What is an adverb? Additional information

What is an adverb? – see: lesson 17 on this blog

What is an Adverb?

Adverbs are words which modify other words. They give information about other words (verbs, adjectives or adverbs) such as: when, where, how or how often something was done.

One effective way of looking at adverbs is to define different categories of adverb:

Different kinds of Adverb:

manner: well, quickly, fast, carefully, slowly, joyfully, violently, madly, lavishly, crossly, indignantly, quickly, hard, warily, convincingly, carefully / frequency: always, often, usually, sometimes, generally, occasionally, hardly ever, seldom, rarely, never / time and place: up, now, then, here, there, yesterday, today, outside, underneath, above, upstairs, soon, recently, afterwards / length of time: already, recently, soon, just, never, always, just, long, afterwards, currently, presently / degree: so, too, extremely, rather, very, very much, really, fairly, quite, badly, really soon, totally, awfully, terribly, angrily, just / quantity: a lot, a little, much / adding and limiting: especially, even, also, only, particularly, specifically, merely, only, purely, either, neither, too / attitude markers: apparently, fortunately, blindly, clearly, hopefully, frankly, naturally, obviously, ostensibly, really, stupidly, surprisingly, unfortunately / linking: however, therefore, nevertheless, firstly / stance: perhaps, actually, surely, oddly, wisely / viewpoint: strictly, mentally, officially, morally / special adverbs: already, still, yet

Examples:

manner: our new neighbour greeted us politely / place: ‘how long have you lived here?‘ she asked / time: ‘we arrived only yesterday‘ we replied / degree: ‘well, I hope you’ll be really happy’ / Frequency: After that we met her quite frequently / linking: However, we learned very little about her / stance: strangely, she never talked about herself / adding and limiting: she talked only about us and the weather / length of time: have you ever met anyone like that? viewpoint: Personally, I found that annoying

Looking at adverbs

Position of adverbs in a sentence:

there are three main positions for adverbs: front, middle, end:

front position: before the subject, example: occasionally John missed lessons (adverb + subject + verb phrase)

middle position: after the first auxiliary, example: John has occasionally missed lessons (subject + first auxiliary + adverb + rest of verb phrase)

middle position: after be as a finite verb, example: John is occasionally absent from lessons (subject + be + adverb)

middle position: if there is no auxiliary, example: John occasionally missed lessons (subject + adverb + finite verb)

end position: at the end of the clause, example: John missed lessons occasionally (subject + verb phrase + ……. + adverb)

Modifiers:

Adverbs as modifiers almost always come before the word they modify. These adverbs are generally adverbs of degree. Examples:

very broad (adverb + adjective) / too soon (adverb + adverb) / just after (adverb + preposition) / too much (adverb + determiner) / so few (adverb + pronoun) / right until (adverb + conjunction)

Adding: ly to adjectives:

we can create a lot of adverbs by adding ly to an adjective. Examples:

ably / busily / calmly / oddly / probably / usually / slowly / thoroughly

In most cases the meaning of the adjectives and adverbs are very close:

adjective: he’s a careful driver / adverb: he drives carefully

adjective – adverb:

cheap – cheaply / tragic – tragically / quick – quickly / economic – economically / slow – slowly / easy – easily / angry – angrily / happy – happily / lucky – luckily / probable – probably / terrible – terribly / gentle – gently / basic – basically

A number of adverbs have the same form as adjectives. The most important are: just, well, right, far, forward, early, hard, straight, pretty, little, fast, late, left, backward, north, east, south, west, direct, opposite, near, high, straight, wrong

examples: there were many high buildings / he drives very fast / this is a hard exercise

The adverb: well and the adjective: good have similar meaning. For example: he is a good person / he studies well / he is a good athlete / he plays the guitar well / they work well together

However, some of the most common adverbs are not related to adjectives. For example: in, about, so, now, very, there, here, as, quite