English grammar - Roger Berry 2012
A4.2 Adverbs
A4 Adjectives, adverbs and prepositions
Section A. Introduction
Adverbs are an open word class (see B1). They consist of a number of sub-classes, some of which are only loosely connected to the others (for example, the intensifiers described above). They have been called a ’ragbag’ - a place for putting unwanted things. Isolated systems of words, such as yes and no, please, and not, are usually included in adverbs, though they have little in common with them. As a result they are much harder to define than other word classes.
Traditionally adverbs have been thought of as words derived by the addition of -ly to adjectives that modify the meaning of verbs in terms of their manner, time and place. However, there is a vast range of meanings conveyed by adverbs, and not all of them modify verbs. We have already seen one such case: intensifiers, used to modify adjectives: very happy. And a lot of adverbs, even those to do with manner, time and place, do not end in -ly.
Put your hands together.
I soon realised he wasn’t coming.
Put the money there.
Activity A4.3
Identify the adverbs in these sentences:
1. Have they arrived yet?
2. Even my mother likes her slightly.
3. He’s not quite ready.
4. I was only looking at it.
Form and function
As regards their form, unlike the other three open word classes (nouns, adjectives, verbs), adverbs do not have any inflections that can be used to identify them, apart from a few endings of limited application, such as -wards (e.g. afterwards), -ways (e.g. sideways) and -wise (e.g. lengthwise). The -ly inflection is not a reliable indicator, partly because, as mentioned, many adverbs do not end in -ly, but also because many words ending in -ly are adjectives, for example:
costly, daily, deadly, friendly, kindly, kingly, likely, lively, lonely, lovely, ugly, weekly
These do not add -ly to form adverbs; you cannot say ’she spoke lovelily/friendlily’.
In addition, there are some adverbs that have the same form as adjectives, for example, late, early, fast, straight, dead:
We arrived late. It’s dead easy.
Just as with the corresponding adjective, these may form comparatives and superlatives where appropriate with -er and -est:
He arrived later/earlier than expected.
Otherwise comparison is formed using more and most: more politely.
We should also note that there are some ’-ly’ adverbs that are not related in meaning to adjectives even though they appear to be, e.g. hardly, lately, largely:
I hardly know him.
Since adverbs do not have any distinctive morphological features, we need to refer to their structural role for identification. Adverbs have two main grammatical functions:
□ as the modifier of another word, as we saw above with intensifiers, e.g. of adjectives (He’ very happy. He’ a very happy man.), other adverbs (e.g. very quickly, only now) or pronouns and noun phrases (e.g. They wont like it, especially her).
□ as the adverbial element in a clause: We walked slowly. See A8 for more on adverbials, especially their position in the sentence.
Activity A4.4
Write two sentences for each of the following words, one where they are adverbs and one where they are adjectives: harder, kindly, later, fast, well.
NON-STANDARD FORMS
In non-standard usage, particularly American, some ’adjectives’ are used as adverbs; in some cases the ’-ly’ adverb would not be an appropriate alternative. Here are some examples:
That’s real cool. (Really cool is also possible.)
He’ doing fine. (Finely would sound strange.)
We clean forgot. (= ’completely’; cleanly would not be possible.)
Take it easy. (In this fixed expression easily would sound strange.)
They guessed right. (Correctly would be similar in meaning, but not rightly.)
Section B4 deals with different types of adverb; another type, adverb particles, is dealt with in B7.