4.8 Adverbs and adverbials

Comparative adjectives often have the meaning ‘fairly’, ‘quite’:

eine ältere Frau

an elderly woman, a fairly old woman eine größere Stadt a fair-sized town, quite a large town Ich habe längere Zeit dort gewohnt. I lived there for a while/for a number of years.

Many sentences contain elements which give added detail about the action or event, telling us when, where, why or how something happened or was done. Unlike complements, they are not required grammatically. They simply provide extra information and, as long as they make sense in their context, the same words or phrases could in principle be added to any sentence with any verb:

Der Schauspieler spricht deutlich. The actor speaks clearly. Das war finanziell eine Katastrophe. Financially that was a catastrophe. Er kaufte trotzdem eine Karte. He bought a ticket all the same. Ich traf sie um zwei Uhr. I met her at two o’clock. Ich wartete vor dem Kino auf ihn. I waited for him in front of the cinema.

These words and phrases are known as ADVERBIALS, which is a useful term covering both ADVERBS (single words) and longer ADVERBIALPHRASES (e.g. both heute and am heutigen Tage are adverbials). Adverbials can be distinguished according to their function:

adverbs use examples

time

answering the question when damals,lange,oft,gestern,heute,

vor einer Woche,am Freitag

place

answering the question where hier,dort,oben,draußen,überall,

im Garten,neben der Kirche

direction

attitude

reason

manner

answering the question where to/ dorthin,dorther,hinein,herauf,

from woandershin,irgendwohin

commenting on what is said, or hoffentlich,leider,wahrscheinlich, answering a yes/no question natürlich,ohne Zweifel answering the question why dadurch,daher,deshalb,folglich,

trotzdem,aus diesem Grund

answering the question how irgendwie,anders,telefonisch,

durch einen Freund,mit einer Axt

degree answering the question howmuch/ sehr,außerordentlich,relativ, small … (often with adjectives) etwas,ziemlich,in höchstem Maße interrogative wh-words introducing questions wann?,wie lange?,bis wann?,

weshalb?,wieso?,von wo?