Strand 1/Grammar: Lesson 18 – PPs and Subject-Verb Agreement (and a rant about Springboard)

A typical method for teaching about language is to integrate in to writing instruction, often in mini-lessons, or, in textbooks, in “Grammar and Usage” sidebars, such as this one in

from The College Board’s Springboard: English Textual Power (Level 2, p. 97), for grade 7. Too often, these approaches attempt shortcuts to real explanations about language, leading students to miss the intended lesson and doubt their intuitions; consequently, students, regardless of writing ability, do not gain command of grammar as a rhetorical tool, nor do they have any confidence in their ability to analyze language.

Let’s look at this “Grammar and Usage” box a bit more closely. Here's the whole text from the photo, which occurs alongside a text about persuasive writing.

“A preposition links the noun or pronoun following it (its object) to another word in a sentence. Prepositional phrases add specific or necessary detail in sentences. They function as adjectives or adverbs.

Adverb phrase modifying the verb has swerved:
“…Skateboarding has swerved from the fringe.”

Adjective phrase modifying the noun cost:
“…the cost of doing business.”

You can use prepositional phrases to add specific details when you write. Take care to use correct subject-verb agreement. When a prepositional phrase separates the subject and verb, the verb agrees with the subject, not with the object of the prepositional phrase.

(Springboard: English Textual Power, Level 2, p. 97)

It is at the end of this sidebar that a connection to a typical "error" of writing, subject-verb agreement, is made. However, no examples are given, and it would be very difficult for students (or teachers) to glean how prepositional phrases are related to subject-verb agreement, or even to understand what is meant by that phrase or others such as “object of the prepositional phrase.”

I offer what I think the intended lesson is here. Subject-verb agreement is often listed as one of the most common errors of writing; it shows up on lists from elementary to college-level writing. Most writers, however, do not have issues at all with subject verb agreement in general. Our unconscious intuitions serve us quite well in guiding this agreement. (English language learners may have specific issues with subject-verb agreement, and these learners deserved a distinct, targeted lesson. Also, some English dialects have different patterns of subject-verb agreement that might deserve a separate lesson. Such variations should not be called “errors” since they are patterned and logical for each dialect, but they may differ from the so-called academic writing expected in most classroom writing.) However, one place in which there is variation with respect to subject-verb agreement involves subjects which contain prepositional phrases, as in the following examples:

Each one of the birds are/is going to leave the nest soon.
Neither of my two suitcases is/are adequate for this trip.
Bellingham is one of those cities which is/are working hard to reclaim a waterfront.

The typical usage suggestion is to make the verb agree with the subject noun preceding the prepositional phrase. However, when there is a mismatch in the “number” – singular each compared to plural birds, for example, as in the first example above – then speakers and writers choose either a verb to match the noun preceding the prepositional phrase or the noun within the prepositional phrase. And the facts are, of course, more complicated. The type of noun preceding the prepositional phrase can affect the form of the verb. Consider these examples with a term of measurement, like gallon or quart.

Three gallons of milk is enough.

Here singular is seems better even though gallons is plural. In contrast, plural are is preferred in the following example:

Three cats with long fur are enough.

Or consider nouns that have two meanings, as either a mass or a count noun, like chicken.

All of the chicken is gone.
All of the chickens are gone.

The all, the noun preceding the prepositional phrase in both examples, is irrelevant in determining the agreement; instead, we do and should use the noun in the prepositional phrase to determine the appropriate agreement, just as we are advised not to by the general usage rule. Whether or not you decide to deal with the additional data that make this particular usage rule a bit more complicated (but really interesting!), it certainly illustrates that patterns of language can be complex and sometimes murky. And that we should take more time to discuss grammatical terminology (prepositional phrases), grammatical functions (subjects), and the reasons behind the variations. After that, students can make informed choices about, for example, subject-verb agreement in writing. However, I challenge any student to understand these lessons or adjust their own verb choices in writing from an oversimplified sidebar such as the one discussed here.

A second issue I have with this particular “grammar and usage” sidebar is the conflation of adjective phrase, adverb phrase, and prepositional phrase. There has long been a tendency to conflate “form” and “function”, or syntax and meaning, in pedagogical grammatical explanations. To do so, however, ignores the actual patterns of language. Such conflation of terms is not only not useful, but it leads students to doubt their intuitions about word categories, and it provides no tools of analysis to extend to other examples. Consider the italicized words below.

“A preposition links the noun or pronoun following it (its object) to another word in a sentence. Prepositional phrases add specific or necessary detail in sentences. They function as adjectives or adverbs”

And it offers the following example, where the italicized prepositional phrase is called an adverb phrase.

Adverb phrase modifying the verb has swerved:
“…Skateboarding has swerved from the fringe.”

And the next, where the italicized prepositional phrase is called an adjective phrase.

Adjective phrase modifying the noun cost:
“…the cost of doing business.”

Why this conflation of terms? Why call prepositional phrases adjectives and adverbs? I believe the point is to illustrate that prepositional phrases can modify verbs (like adverbs can) and nouns (as do adjectives). This is true, and discussion of modification is important and useful. It's also true that there is overlap in how the various parts of speech function, as modifiers and complements of other categories. However, the category distinctions are real distinctions – categories that we all have in our heads that function uniquely in terms of their morphology and their syntax. Terms like noun, adjective, preposition, or adverb are not labels arbitrarily imposed on a language, but are real (and complex) categories. Understanding this is another useful lesson for students, and using the terminology that matches their intuitive categorization will allow them to make use of labels in a productive way, extending the conversations beyond simply labeling to how to manipulate phrases in their writing. We can offer students straightforward tools of analysis that allow them to discover these category distinctions and see how they employ such tools unconsciously all the time. We all have unconscious knowledge about categories. By using accurate labels, we are simply connecting that unconscious knowledge to terminology to help make it conscious knowledge which we can then apply in all sorts of ways – to our writing, to our analysis of literature, to investigation of other linguistic patterns, and so on. Sidebars or mini-lessons such as the ones described here are attempts to cut to the chase, to deal with common writing errors in a fast and efficient manner. However, the assumed background knowledge, the misleading terminology, and the lack of discussion of reasons behind the variations ("errors") render such lessons essentially useless.

Hmm, I titled this "lesson" but I'm not sure that it is, except maybe it's a lesson to avoid using Springboard, which many of the teachers I know don't like anyway. And it does provide another justification for studying prepositions and prepositional phrases if you want to wrestle with subject-verb agreement as it arises in your students' writing. Of course, intervening prepositional phrases are just one of the reasons that agreement with the verb varies. Browse through this or this or this one from my alma mater to find some others - but I wouldn't suggest marching through all of the reasons that subject-verb agreement "problems" arise.

Strand 1/Grammar: Lesson 17 - Prepositions

What to say about prepositions? Their main job is to relate or connect two parts of a clause. But that's vague - lots of categories do that. As mentioned here, many of them convey some kind of directional, spatial, or locational meaning. I mentioned there too that we have seen preposition meaning undergo changes, like all words, and that many of the original spatial relations have been extended, often metaphorically, to convey other kinds of meanings like time (until 6 o’clock, since I was four), manner (by train), accompaniment (with fries), among others. And consider the prepositions in the following examples.

I am standing by the pole.
The poem was written by my friend.
She wore a shirt with stripes.
They hit the ball with a stick

So their meanings are quite polysemous, which is cool, and is just one indicator of how they have lost some of their meaning, on the one hand, while gaining more subtle meaning distinctions on the other. Believe it or not, there’s a great little 5-minute video from The Human Language Series by Gene Searchinger where Ray Jackendoff talks about the complexity of prepositions.

Prepositions’ transition from being content words to function words means that that their “contentful” meaning is lost, which is why we find variation in which one can be used.

I waited in line for the movie.
I waited on line for the movie.

I picked up the wrong shirt on accident.
I picked up the wrong shirt by accident.

I feel sick to my stomach.
I feel sick at my stomach.
I feel sick on my stomach.

Prepositions have changed over time from being meaningful, content words to being more grammatical, function words. (See the Parts of Speech doc here.) And the fact that we can use varying prepositions also demonstrates this lack of specific meaning. Their presence is key, though. No one that I know of can have no preposition in any of the examples above.

Prepositions ride the line between being content/form/meaningful/open class words and function/grammatical/closed class words. Our main content words are nouns, verbs, and adjectives. We can and do add new words to these categories all the time. The other classes of words (which includes determiners, auxiliary verbs, conjunctions, degree words, modals, pronouns, and quantifiers) have members that are fairly fixed, and new words do not join these categories very frequently. (One recent exciting new conjunction, though, is slash. Read what Anne Curzan says about it here. My students are in solid agreement on the new usage of this conjunction slash conjunctive adverb.) Prepositions haven't been added to the language in a very long time, so in that way they seem like a closed class. They, however, do still have some "real" meaning - up means up, down means down. But others are more ethereal.

As discussed in that other post, there are a group of prepositions, sometimes called subordinating conjunctions, which introduce clauses. Some don’t like the “conjunction” part of this label since conjunctions join “like” things – NPs (dogs but cats), VPs (runs or jumps), PPs (in and out), APs (big and tall), clauses (We ate all the cereal, but then we bought some more.). And this subtype of preposition introduces subordinate clauses, so they are not equal to, but subordinate to or dependent on, the main clause. They include after, as, before, since, until, because, while,(al)though, when, where, and phrasal ones such as even though, as much as, and as though.

We arrived at school [after the doors were locked].
The squirrels simply looked at us [as we filled the feeder].
My relatives give me money [because they have no idea what I like].

If you feel more comfortable calling these subordinating conjunctions, I see no problem with that. Or, as I mentioned, my students prefer the term subordinating prepositions.

I haven't constructed a lesson plan for prepositions because the teachers I work with have seen no need for one. Students are able to identify them fairly easily, and there aren’t many usage rules surrounding them (except the one about not ending a sentence with a preposition, which I can’t bear to draw more attention to, especially since it’s a faux rule, but if you want to read about it, there certainly are places you can do that. And in fact Merriam-Webster’s online dictionary has a good short video about it). Common Core Standards want students to know about prepositions. Here's just one example from 5th grade, but there are several others. And I will post soon about how prepositional phrases correlate with subject-verb agreement. Oh, and there are a whole group of words, called particles, that used to be prepositions and now glom on to the verb. So I'll talk about those. They're cool - and they can be a pain in the neck for non-native English speakers. In the meantime, prepositions are interesting little beasts, so you should bring them up.

Because preposition

If you haven’t already done so, you might want to talk with your students about the 2013 Word of the Year selections just voted on by the American Dialect Society at the annual Linguistic Society of America meeting.

The word, as you may have already heard, is because. You can check out Ben Zimmer’s post here and Anne Curzan’s here and LanguageLog’s here.

If you’re worried about the classification of because as a preposition, as some are, you can read this by Geoff Pullum. However, he can be offputting; he calls those who label because an adverb “stupid” and those who call it a conjunction “flamingly and demonstrably wrong.” Yikes.

So let’s look at some data. We, on this blog, haven’t discussed prepositions or conjunctions, for that matter, so a real exploratory investigation of this is perhaps best delayed, but let’s take a preliminary look.

Let’s first see how because does behave like other prepositions. Most prepositional phrases (bracketed below) contain a head preposition and a complement (in second set of brackets) of that preposition. Those complements are typically noun phrases:

I sat [on [the roof]].
We walked [to [the store]].

But they can also be participial verb phrases:

She replied [without [reading the email]].

or another prepositional phrase:

They put the food [out [on the table]].

And they can be clauses:

The dog was tired [after [we took her for a walk]].

We seem less uncomfortable – more comfortable – with after (than with because) as a preposition because it can also occur with just noun phrases. Same for since.

I’ll call you [after [10 o’clock]].
I’ve been waiting [since [the dawn of time]].

After and since both occur with clauses too.

I’ll call you [after [I finish my coffee]].
I’ve been waiting [since [you walked out the door]].

And, like after, since, even though, until, and when, because can also be followed by a clause:

I like you [because [you are funny]].
I like you [even though [you are funny]].
I liked you [until [you weren’t funny anymore]].
I liked you [when [you were funny]].

So if our definition of preposition allows clausal complements like these, because fits right in.

I think that one reason that some are uncomfortable calling because a preposition is that many of our prepositions are directional/locational. And some may have learned a little ditty like a preposition is anything a bunny can do to a hill or anything an airplane can do to a cloud: in, out, on, around, above, inside, behind, and so on. Because doesn’t fit that mold. But the meanings of prepositions have been expanding for centuries, becoming much more metaphorical, for one thing: from two to four o’clock is no longer strictly directional, for example, and we're ok with it being called a preposition.

This notion of spatial or directional meaning is reinforced in some dictionaries. Remember how we have discussed how meaning-based definitions of other categories can be problematic. See posts here, here, and here. And here are a couple of dictionaries' definitions of preposition.

Merriam-Webster’s definition of preposition: a word or group of words that is used with a noun, pronoun, or noun phrase to show direction, location, or time, or to introduce an object.

And Dictionary.com: any member of a class of words found in many languages that are used before nouns, pronouns, or other substantives to form phrases functioning as modifiers of verbs, nouns, or adjectives, and that typically express a spatial, temporal, or other relationship, as in, on, by, to, since.

So when you’re working with these kinds of definitions, calling because a preposition may seem weird. And it’s important to note that for the most part, those definitions work, just as calling a noun a “person, place, or thing” usually works. Some huge majority of our prepositions are spatial and directional. There are good reasons to call because a preposition, but there are also reasons to not fault those who don’t like that label. I’ve had students who really want a different label for this group of words that introduce clauses that are not subordinate clauses. Some classes have settled on “subordinating prepositions.” Maybe your students have some other ideas. Let’s briefly look at how these prepositions that introduce clauses are different from another group of words that introduces clauses.

A group of words called complementizers or subordinating conjunctions introduces clauses, but these link a subordinate clause to a main clause, like the following:

I know [that [she is hungry]].
I wonder [if [it will rain]].
She asked [whether [she should dance]].

That, if, and whether introduce whole clauses too (like because), but behave very differently syntactically and semantically. They link one clause to another, introducing the subordinate clause, and the predicate in the main clause depends on that lower clause in order to complete the sentence. Our because doesn’t do that. More on all this in another post, because lunchtime.

Strand 2/Morphology - Part 8: Verbal Affixes Follow-Up (an -ate problem)

Beth’s astute students may have noticed when making this fine chart that there were some inconsistencies with the -ate suffixes. I have noted in previous posts that, in general, affixes attach to one part of speech and result in another part of speech. -Ate, however, complicates that claim.

Let’s see what they found. They discovered that -ate attaches to adjectives and results in verbs.

activate: active (A) + ate = activate (V)
validate: valid (A) + ate = validate (V)

Oh, but -ate also seems to attach to nouns to make verbs.

motivate: motive (N) + ate = motivate (V)
originate: origin (N) + ate = originate (V)

And mostly, it seems to attach to non-words (bound roots) to make verbs.

frustrate
dominate
emaciate
integrate
legislate
educate
saturate

And then there are these which are all adjectives, not verbs. And the -ate in this set attaches to nouns (fortune), verbs (consider), and bound roots:

fortunate
considerate
desolate
separate
desperate

Notice the pronunciation of the -ate is different in these, with a reduced, schwa vowel.

So what’s going on? Dictionary.com has this to say about the affix –ate:

a suffix occurring in loanwords from Latin. The form originated as a suffix added to a certain class of Latin verbs to form adjectives (fortunate). The resulting word could also be used independently as a nouns (advocate) and came to be used as a stem on which a could be formed (separate, advocate, agitate). In English the use as a verbal suffix has been extended to stems of non-Latin origin: calibrate.

But try to have your students figure out the various patterns first. A rough lesson plan for this is here with some answers provided here. It includes heading to the dictionary to find out more about the history of this suffix. The Online Etymology Dictionary has this to say about -ate:

a word-forming element used in forming nouns from Latin words ending in -atus, -atum (e.g. estate, primate, senate). Those that came to English via Old and Middle French often arrived with -at, but an -e was added after c.1400 to indicate the long vowel.

The suffix also can mark adjectives, formed from Latin past participles in -atus, -ata (e.g. desolate, moderate, separate), again, they often were adopted in Middle English as -at, with an -e appended after c.1400

So, many of those that attach to roots were just a past participial marker on a word, like these (all from Online Etymology Dictionary):

educate: from Latin educatus, past participle of educare "bring up, rear, educate".

confiscate: from Latin confiscatus, past participle of confiscare, from com- "together" (see com-) + fiscus "public treasury," literally "money basket".

saturate: from Latin saturatus, past participle of saturare "to fill full, sate, drench," from satur "sated, full," from PIE root *sa- "to satisfy".

And some are faux suffixes, such as legislate, which is a backformation from legislation.

An investigation of this affix is a good example of why we should trust our instincts and when they tip us off that something is up, we should be prepared to conduct some analysis. That is, when there are differing answers and students express doubt about their choices (about a part of speech or something else), that’s a superb indicator that there is something to be investigated. When Beth’s students were going through this, perhaps they hesitated on labeling the part of speech of valid (which they labeled as a noun) because motive was the word preceding, which they had correctly labeled as a noun. They were working under the assumption that affixes always attach to the same part of speech, so they labeled valid as a noun as well. But I’d bet that there was some hesitation in doing so. And that’s because it’s in fact an adjective, and that, as we’ve seen above, -ate attaches to all kinds of things.

So thanks for the fabulous chart, Beth’s class, and I look forward to seeing your adjective one!

Strand 1/Grammar – Lesson 16: More on Adverbs and Other Modifiers – and Punctuation!

Adverbs can occur in a variety of positions in a sentence. This kind of movability is typical of many modifiers.

She carefully picked up the kitten.
She picked up the kitten carefully.
Carefully, she picked up the kitten.

He often forgets to bring his lunch.
He forgets to bring his lunch often.
Often, he forgets to bring his lunch.

Apparently, someone forgot to close the door.
Someone forgot to close the door, apparently.
Someone apparently forgot to close the door.

Do the different positions of the adverb in each of these examples affect the meaning? If so, how?

As mentioned in lesson 14, the term “adverbial” has been used by some to mean “modify.” Lots of different types of phrases can be modifiers: noun phrases, verb phrases, prepositional phrases, adjective phrases, and whole clauses can modify, providing extra, non-essential information about reason, place, cause, condition, and so on. Some examples of modifiers, of the category Adverb, but also of other categories, are given below.

Hastily, I ate the cookie. - adverb
Guilty, he walked up to the stand. - adjective
That guy looked at him in a meaningful way. - prepositional phrase
We won the game yesterday. - noun
Laughing loudly, we walked into the theater – participial verb phrase
His lips curled in a snarl, the dog backed away. – participial clause

Notice that when these occur at the beginning of the clause, they are set off by commas. In usage guides, such words and phrases are often called “introductory elements,” a vague term if I ever heard one, and to leave out the comma is considered a fairly serious error of writing. The “comma intonation” is marked by a downward intonation and sometimes a slight pause. See what your students think about these beginning-of-the-sentence modifiers and whether they all have intonational distinctions or pauses or both.

Another clue to punctuating such modifiers is, that if it is indeed a modifier and one that can be set off by a comma, it should be able to move around – to the beginning of the sentence, to the end, and sometimes, even, to the middle (like even in this sentence). If it’s not a modifier and is a necessary component of the sentence, it won’t move around so easily.

Note that adjectives in prenominal position – before a noun – cannot move, even though they are modifiers. In fact, there is a fairly strict order of adjectives when there is more than one. Which sounds better – a little brown dog or a brown little dog? Can you explain why? Probably not. When we have more than one adjective, there is an order to them that native speakers of English usually have intuitions about but have a hard time articulating. Generally, the adjective order in English is something like this:

1. quality, opinion, judgment, or attitude – ugly, awful, worse, lovely
2. size – huge, tiny
3. age, temperature – old, cold
4. shape – oval, square, twisted
5. color – red, orange, greenish
6. origin – Norwegian, local
7. material – woven, metallic, plastic

Activity. Pick a noun and pick a determiner (a, the, my, your, etc.), and then put up to seven adjectives in between them to see if they follow this order. (We almost never have that many adjectives in regular speech, so you might want to try three or four – but seven is kind of fun as an extra challenge!) Compare your lists to see if you agree on the adjective orderings.

the ___________, ___________, ___________, ___________, ___________, ___________, ___________, thing


There may be some adjectives that you aren’t sure how to categorize. Discuss with each other to see if you can agree what kind of adjective it might be.

Modifiers allow us to add non-essential but important information to a sentence, and they also give us with a way to combine clauses and make our writing more interesting. Consider the two independent clauses below:

Bo talked quietly to his kitten. He didn’t want to scare it.

Or we can use one of the movable modifiers to combine the two independent clauses into one:

Bo talked quietly to his kitten because he didn’t want to scare it.
Because he didn’t want to scare it, Bo talked quietly to his kitten.

Here are some other examples:

Sue tapped Lou. Lou jumped. Sue tapped Lou and Lou jumped. – combining with and
When Sue tapped Lou, Lou jumped. – combining with a clausal modifier

Movable modifiers therefore provide ways to vary clause structure and sentence style. We can stack up several movable modifiers.

Sue tapped Lou very lightly on her way to her seat.
Sue wanted Lou to know she wasn’t mad at him.
Lou knew that Sue wasn’t mad.

On her way to her seat, Sue tapped Lou, very lightly, because she wanted him to know she wasn’t mad at him, even though Lou probably knew that.

We see movable modifiers in written texts quite frequently, and it may well be the case that they are much more of a feature of written language than of spoken language.

Activity. Combine the following short sentences into a single longer, more complex one, which maintains essentially the same meaning.

The cat chased the rat. The rat was probably scared.
I stood on the deck. It was dusk. I saw the sunset. The sunset was beautiful.
My sister doesn’t like eggs. She eats eggs anyway. They have protein.

Here's this lesson as a doc.

Strand 1/Grammar – Lesson 15: Degree Words

There is a group of words that are sometimes called adverbs which actually are a category distinct from adverb. These degree words (also sometimes called intensifiers) include words like very, so, too, rather, and quite. They serve to express degree of an adjective or adverb.

I ran very quickly. - degree word modifying adverb quickly
They are running so fast. - degree word modifying adverb fast

She is rather happy. - degree word modifying adjective happy.

Notice how adverbs cannot appear in these positions, modifying adverbs or adjectives:

*She is quickly happy.
*They are running happily fast.

There are a few adverbs, mentioned in lesson 14, that can modify adjectives that do not express degree.

She is obviously surprised.
They are probably happy.

Most -ly words that precede adjectives, however, are degree words, not adverbs.

She is incredibly tired.
We are really excited.

Activity: Determine what each of the following italicized words is modifying and whether it is an adverb or degree word.

The chair is significantly damaged.
The student was unexpectedly nervous.
The teacher is visibly frustrated.
The owl is thought to be inherently wise.
The test was incredibly easy.
My friend is overly competitive.
Your room is meticulously neat.
It’s horribly cold outside!
This purse is outrageously expensive.
The cake is sinfully delicious.

When one tries to fit the words of English into eight parts of speech categories, Degree is typically not one of them. Then we’re left confused and doubting our intuitions, which tell us that such words are different from adverbs. They occur in different positions and modify different words. Now, that is very interesting!

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.