The National Strategies | Secondary Grammar for reading and writing
19
Adverbs and adverbial phrases Adverbs modify or add information to a verb, an adjective, a preposition, another adverb or a whole sentence. They are often formed by adding the morpheme –ly to an adjective e.g. quick/quickly. As usual the most common one is irregular: good/well. ●●
I really enjoyed the party. (adverb + verb)
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She is really attractive. (adverb + adjective)
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We were flying just above the clouds. (adverb + preposition)
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We arrived just as he was departing. (adverb + conjunction)
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He works really slowly. (adverb + adverb)
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Really, he should do much better. (adverb + sentence)
The main kinds of adverb indicate: ●●
manner:
I ran quickly
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place:
Put the book there
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time:
I’ll go out soon
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frequency: I go to the gym regularly
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degree:
I enjoy cake more.
There are also interrogative adverbs: why, when, where, how. These relate to what the main kinds of adverb indicate so how requires an answer of manner or degree; when time, where place and so on.
Adverbial phrases Adverbial phrases are very important in a sentence as they give explicit information about the verb, describing how the verb was done. A typical adverbial phrase would be: ●●
He wrote extremely quickly.
In this phrase, quickly is the head word and extremely intensifies quickly. Adverbs such as extremely, really, nearly, hardly are useful in that they increase or diminish the force of the word they modify.
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