Calling It Like It Is: Noun Clause, Adjective Clause, Adverb Clause

Terminology is a problem in grammar. Maybe it is in lots of fields. Marine biologists get up in arms, I hear, when we call starfish starfish instead of the more correct, apparently, seastar. They aren’t fish, they tell us, so don’t call them fish. (They aren’t stars either, but whatever.)

I’ve already talked about the adverb/adverbial issue here, and a related one that I’ve been asked about is Noun Clause, Adjective Clause, and Adverb Clause. So let’s get to it.

These terms are pretty widespread, perhaps more so in teaching English to speakers of other languages, and in teaching other languages to speakers of English, but are also sometimes used in straight-up descriptions of English grammar to English speakers. Yeah, they’re everywhere.

So, on the one hand, the labels don’t matter that much; call things whatever you want. On the other hand (the more important hand), using these terms once again conflates form and function, which can confuse and mislead. I have discussed elsewhere why it’s better for students to take advantage of their intuitions about morphological and syntactic patterns, rather than on meaning-based definitions and functions. We have some techniques for identifying nouns, for example, (they can be made plural, they take determiners, etc.) but then these noun clauses don’t match up with what we know about nouns.

A noun clause is typically defined as a clause that functions as a noun. Let’s look at some typical examples of things labeled as noun clauses, the bracketed parts below;

She believes [that the fairies are real].
We wonder [when they will arrive].

Good old about.com gives us this – Noun clause: A dependent clause that functions as a noun (that is, as a subject, object, or complement) within a sentence. Also known as a nominal clause.

I would say, however, that these are both simply subordinate clauses. They are subordinate to the main clause and dependent upon the main verb in that clause. We can further label them that-clauses and wh-clauses, but there doesn’t seem to be any real advantage to calling them noun clauses. The reason they are considered nounish and labeled as noun clauses by some is that they serve as complements of a verb or as subjects, as nouns can. But it’s a lot more straightforward to simply call them subordinate or dependent clauses and ignore that noun part. You gain nothing from that label, and it leads students to doubt their intuitions about what nouns really are.

So let’s look at adjective clause and adverb clause, to see if those labels help shed light on the noun clause label – or on anything, for that matter.

Adjective clauses are also called (my preference) “relative clauses”. The term is preferable since it doesn’t conflate an actual adjective with the function of adjectives. These types of clauses serve to give more information about a noun, like adjectives do, but they are not adjectives themselves. They’re just clauses. They’re called relative clauses because they “relate” the info in the clause to the noun that the clause modifies.

The man [who I saw yesterday] left his hat here.
I saw the fox [that ate the chickens from our coop].
Let’s eat at the restaurant [where you went last night].

It’s clearer to me – and to my students and the students of other teachers I have worked with – to not use the terms noun clause and adjective clause. Let nouns be nouns and adjectives be adjectives.

Same for so-called adverb clauses. As discussed in this post, adverbs are a bit messy – and all kinds of things get labeled as adverbs. I believe that we should not add clauses to that. Here are some examples of the kinds of things that some people label adverb clauses:

Joe scrubbed the floor [until his arms ached].
The dogs had been barking [since the owners left].
Fay walked to the store [because she was out of eggs].

Huh? The claim is that these are all adverb clauses because they answer the questions where, when, or why. But lots of different kinds of phrases do that. These are prepositional phrases; I’ve discussed them here.

Nothing is gained, that I can see, by calling these adverbial. It confuses form and function, which wouldn’t be a problem if it wasn’t actually confusing!

It’s just clearer and more accurate to call nouns nouns, adjectives adjectives, adverbs adverbs, and clauses clauses. Are there benefits to distinguishing among the various kinds of clauses? Yeah, sure, there can be. But I’d want to use labels that don’t conflate form and function. I can discuss different types of subordinate clauses in another post. Till then, let's just call it like it is.

Strand 1/Grammar – Lesson 14: Adverbs

Adverbs are an elusive member of the phrasal categories – they’re a bit difficult to define, both in terms of their meaning and their morphology and syntax. One of the main reasons adverbs cause trouble is terminological. That is, some grammarians over the years have used the term “adverbial” to mean “any category or phrase that modifies another,” so that means prepositional phrases or non-essential nouns or infinitival clauses. This is confusing. There is evidence that adverbs have unique morphological and syntactic behavior, enough to justify a unique category, so they deserve that. And if we reserve the term “modify” for anything that is not required by another element, then both terms, adverb and modify, will be more useful. Here is just one example of the many that use the term “adverbial phrase” to mean, circularly, “playing the role of an adverb”. I do not find that this is useful. All sorts of types of phrases can serve as modifiers, so reserve the term adverb for just adverbs.

So if adverbs are not "adverbial phrases," what are they? Generally, adverbs modify, or give extra information about verbs, and they describe manner, time, attitude of the speaker, possibility, or serve to focus certain parts of the sentence.

The kids all ran slowly. (manner)
My mom runs often. (time)
Your friends will hopefully meet you at the airport. (attitude)
We will probably be late for school. (possibility)

They sometimes end in -ly, but not always. They can have no suffix, or they can have suffixes other than -ly, including -wise, -like, -ward, and -ways.

We are eating fast.
They ran too slow.
He wrote on the page sideways.
She walked backwards in the playground.
The baby crawled crablike across the room.

Note that some adverbs have the same form as their related adjectives, which can be a bit tricky when trying to label them. Adjectives, however, do not modify verbs; only adverbs do.

adverb: We ran hard in the race.
adjective: The hard race was almost over.

adverb: Be safe!
adjective: She is a very safe driver.

(Adjectives don’t modify verbs, but they can be complements of verbs, meaning that the adjective is not just extra information, but is needed to “complete” the meaning of the sentence: She is tired. I’ll have a separate post on complements.)

Although the examples above with hard and safe are acceptable, other suffixless adverbs are considered less standard in formal written English. They are usually quite standard in speech, however, and follow the natural rules of language.

We ran slow.
She walks too quick for me.
I think I did good on that test.

Merriam-Webster's video on flat adverbs is pretty good.

Activity: In a book or other text, find examples of adverbs. Do they modify the verb, giving you more information about the manner, time, or purpose? If you think you have an adverb but it doesn’t modify a verb, it may modify the whole sentence. We’ll look at some of these sentence adverbs in a separate post.

Like adjectives, you can indicate comparisons using adverbs with their comparative and superlative forms, either -er/-est or more/less.
(Not all adverbs that take comparative -er can also take superlative -est.)

The runner ran harder during the last mile of the race.
The runner ran fastest during the last mile of the race.

We ate dinner later than usual.
She arrived earliest of all the guests.

My friend runs more frequently than I do.
My friend most often runs in the morning.

Typically, as with adjectives, shorter, one-syllable words take -er and -est and longer, multi-syllabic words take more and most. Adverbs that end in -ly always take -er and -est: more slowly.

Also, as with adjectives, some adverbs have irregular comparative and superlative forms:

Our team played badly/worse/worst at the soccer game.
Our team played well /better/best at the soccer game.

Activity: Some words cannot have comparative and superlative forms. From the following list of adverbs, determine which ones cannot and see if you can come up with a reason why not. For those that can take a comparative form, write whether it is –er or more. Do the same for the superlative forms.

actually, afterwards, almost, always, annually, anxiously, boldly, bravely, briefly, busily, calmly, carefully, carelessly, cautiously, certainly, cheerfully, clearly, continually, courageously, daily, daintily, dearly, defiantly, deliberately, easily, elegantly, energetically, equally, especially, eventually, exactly, excitedly, fairly, faithfully, far, fast, fortunately, frankly, gracefully, immediately, interestingly, knowingly, nervously, often, quietly, seldom, sometimes, soon, surprisingly, suspiciously, sweetly, truthfully, unnaturally, upbeat, vaguely

(The idea is that, like with adjectives, certain adverbs are not gradable, so resist such comparisons. See the post on adjectives.)

Occasionally, adverbs can modify words other than verbs, including nouns:

Only one friend waited for me. (only modifies one friend)

And adverbs can sometimes modify adjectives, though often these will be degree words instead, which we’ll learn about in the next lesson.

She is obviously tired. The cats are clearly happy.

Have fun exploring the poor misunderstood adverb. It is actually quite useful. Writers are sometimes discouraged from using adverbs, especially in fiction writing; examples of such prohibitions are here and here. And though I rarely meet an adverb that should be axed, perhaps your students do use them too abundantly, and now should at least be able to identify them.

Here's a version of this lesson as a doc.