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.

Strand 1/Grammar - Lesson 12: Adjectives

Just as the meaning-based definitions for nouns and verbs can be problematic, so too can a definition of adjective that labels it simply as a “describing word”; nouns can also describe (linguistics book), as can verbs (She is diving.), so, again, it is the morphological and syntactic information that is more reliable and less subjective when identifying adjectives.

Most adjectives take comparative and superlative morphology: -er/-est or the words more and most. (For more on what it is that determines which a word can take, see this document.)

So now we already have a handy test for adjectives.

Test 1 for Adjectives: Does the word have a comparative and superlative form?

small, smaller, smallest
curious, more curious, most curious
ugly, uglier, ugliest
difficult, more difficult, most difficult

There's a lesson on TeachLing on the comparative and superlative forms of adjectives. (I should note that many adverbs also have comparative and superlative forms: I run faster than you. I'll come back to adverbs in some later post.)

Now, some adjectives cannot be compared since they are not gradable, so it might be weird to say

This chair is more wooden than that one.
He is more married than she is.

since you’re either wooden or you’re not, married or not, and so on. Sometimes, however, we use these forms in certain situations and they do make sense. If someone said that one chair is more wooden than another, what might that mean?

Gradability is also relevant for a second test for adjectives, their ability to be used with a degree word, like very.

Test 2 for Adjectives: Can the word by preceded by a degree word?

Degree words (also sometimes called intensifiers) are a part of speech (sometimes misclassified as adverbs, though they have different syntactic and morphological behavior – I’ll come back to that at some point) that, well, express degree, so words like very, so, too, more, less, quite, almost, kind of, rather, pretty, sort of, or extremely.

Again, as with the comparative and superlative forms for adjectives, there are some adjectives that resist a word like very since they are already opposite ends on a scale – complete/incomplete, married/not married, wooden/non wooden, pregnant/not pregnant. Does very work with these adjectives? We do use it that way, so you might want to have your students explain what something like "very complete" might mean and when it might be used (rather than just saying "don't say that" or "we can't say that").

Test 3 for Adjectives: Can the word follow a linking verb?

Adjectives occur in two basic positions: before a noun (the furry cat) and following a linking verb (the cat is furry). Linking verbs do just that – “link” to the subject noun phrase by renaming it. Linking verbs include sense verbs like taste, smell, feel, as well as verbs of “existence” like be, remain, seem, appear, grow, or become.

Jojo is tall.
The cat remains skittish.
The toast tastes burned.

So there you go. Three easy tests to use to verify whether a word is an adjective. Anywhere where there is uncertainty or disagreement among your students provides the perfect opportunity to do analysis, some figuring out. If you’re uncertain, that simply means something interesting is going on. One place where there may be some debate is figuring out whether participles are adjectives or verbs. So here’s a document and exercise on that. Another place for disagreement may be with color terms. And a third is with noun modifiers of nouns, so here’s a link to a document on that.