![]() | This ![]() It is of interest to the following WikiProjects: | ||||||||||||||||||||
|
"Naturally as a sentential adverb means something like "of course" and as a verb-modifying adverb means "in a natural manner". This "naturally" controversy demonstrates that the class of sentential adverbs is a closed class (there is resistance to adding new words to the class), whereas the class of adverbs that modify verbs isn't."
Exactly how does this show that sentential adverbs are a closed class?
Doghatbeef ( talk) 01:04, 15 December 2009 (UTC)
I
Something to do with comparative and superlative, but I can't follow it. Could be improved by someone who can follow it. Ortolan88
Sounds reasonable. Wanna rewrite the para? Someone else as dumb as me might read it and be confused. And, if you do, get wiselier outta there. What's that as...as about? Ortolan88
Hopefully?
Hopefully as a sentence adverb is not shunned simply because some purists decided that it should rather be 'I am hopeful + relative clause'. There is more to it. To quote Eric Partridge:
"hopefully, besides meaning 'in a hopeful way', now often means 'it is hoped'. This new use seems no odder than the corresponding use of adverbs such as naturally: ' Hopefully/Naturally she'll come', but it has aroused the rage of many purists. Those who do use it should at least beware of ambiguity, since 'He will leave tomorrow hopefully' might be interpreted in either way [This is, 'It is hoped (or indeed, I am hopeful) that he will leave tomorrow.', or 'He will leave tomorrow in a hopeful way.']."
(Usage and Abusage: A Guide to Good English, Third Edition, 1999, Penguin Group, London)
Near the beginning of the article it says:
"Alternatively, an adverb may be contained within a sentence element.
An extremely small child entered the room. (SUBJECT + ADVERBIAL + OBJECT +VERB)"
Shouldn't it be:
(ADVERBIAL + SUBJECT + VERB + OBJECT)
I'm putting this here instead of making the change myself because I consider myself weak at grammar and could be missing something. But if I am missing something -- it looks like something explaining in more depth. Because I can't for the life of me see how the sentence ends in a verb.
I was sitting around thinking about useless stuff, as usual, and I began to wonder what kind of adverb 'probably', 'possibly', and 'neccessarily' are. It seems to me that they are conditional adverbs, that is, they describe the conditions under which an action will take place. Another cool one may be 'stochastically', but I can see how this may describe in what manner something is done. 'Hopefully' seems conditional, but there's an extra twist of the speaker's desired outcome or result. Is there an "official" list of kinds of adverbs? Arguments for or against adding conditionals to the Groups of adverbs section?
Firstly, what does the NB mean? Nota bene?
Secondly, is there a list of irregular adverb construction adjectives, as well is for good (instead of goodly?). Thank you. -- Abdull 16:51, 2 January 2006 (UTC)
An adverb is a word that modifies a verb, an adjective, or another adverb. Some irregular [mostly, words that we don't recognize as adverbs] adverbs include: very, well, quite, before, usually, a lot, already, rather, really, more, now, not, why etc. It answers the questions: how, when, where, to what extent, or how often.
english class: i need an easier way to explain adverbs.
( Smillar 17:31, 10 January 2006 (UTC)) goodbye
I don't understand how an adverb can modify an entire sentence. In the examples listed on the page, it appears (to me) that only the verb is being modified. Isopropyl 21:53, 5 April 2006 (UTC)
I recently came across a rather strange construction when I was reading a book that explained the usage of adverbs. The sentence was "... a really astronomical figure..." As far as I know, ttwo constructions would be possible: ".... a real astronomical figure..." or " really an astronomical figure.." My question is: which of the two is the correct one? Is it possible to use the first construction?
Teacher Adriano
Order of Adverbs is needed.
Is it possible to have one "-ly" adverb modifying another? For example, can we say: "The bus travelled fairly slowly."
I remember reading that the construction of adverbs in modern Romance languages (that is, adding -ment(e) to the end of the feminine adjective comes from a form or phrase in Greek (perhaps early medieval/late Koine) in which one combines the adjective with the word for "mind (ment/e from the Latin mens). Therefore to do something exactly is do something with and exact mind(exacta+mente). Is there any validity to this? I know this is not how adverbs were formed in Latin, but I do not speak any form of Greek, ancient or otherwise and it's been bugging me for a while. 201.21.96.49 19:15, 9 March 2007 (UTC)
Wouldn't it be more correct to say that someone "spelled the word incorrect" rather than "incorrectly", because by saying that person spelled it "incorrectly" is to say that the mechanism which allows he or she to spell is broken (as in, the physical action the person used to spell the word was incorrect)? And no, I couldn't find a simpler way to form that question. ~ thesublime514 • talk • sign 20:17, 8 April 2007 (UTC)
Whatever the above is all about, I've got an issue with the nonchalant parenthetical claim in the article that English grammar is "derived from Latin". I would call that, at best, misleading and poorly worded. It gives the impression that English would not have grammar if it weren't for Latin. I'm struggling to find anywhere on the Wiki a more substantial claim to this effect (that English grammar is derived from Latin grammar). English is no more derived from Latin than dogs are derived from saber-toothed cats, but in both cases the one is similar to the other because they share a common ancestor. If I don't get some arguments to the contrary pretty soon, I'll remove the clause. Tsunomaru 12:40, 21 May 2007 (UTC)
In its current state the article says that adverbs can't modify nouns, but I've seen (outdated?) grammar books that disagree. Think of only in The blade scratched only the boy, which certainly appears to be modifying the boy (the meaning is quite different from The blade only scratched the boy). And it isn't acting like a typical adjective, since it's positioned before the article the. How would modern linguists describe what's happening here? 61.196.81.225 06:38, 3 August 2007 (UTC)
Among the examples of adverbs modifying nouns we have the sentence "There is a shortage internationally of protein for animal feeds." I believe this is not an example of an adverb modifying a noun at all, as it seems clear to me that in this sentence "internationally" is modifying "is". Perhaps it would be better moved to the example group below, for predicative expressions? 71.63.69.193 ( talk) 14:48, 4 October 2015 (UTC)
I'm struggling to think of an instance where an adverb answers a why? question. Should that be in the list? If so could someone provide an example? Matt 01:49, 15 February 2008 (UTC).
I modified and ultimately removed this passage (my modified version below):
I judged that it led too far afield from the topic at hand. Mark Foskey ( talk) 17:34, 6 April 2009 (UTC)00:21, 11 May 2009 (UTC)00:21, 11 May 2009 (UTC) 68.78.139.90 ( talk) 00:21, 11 May 2009 (UTC)
My complaint is that whatever it is that this person has written, the meaning is not clear at all. The opening sections should always be written in an easily understood form.
An editor recently added
"The Azerbaijani linguistic school" did not consider adverb independent part of speech, since that it is adverbializotion version of the other parts of speech. [sic]
Another editor expanded on this a little more. I am not a linguist by any means. But hunting around Google I don't find any English language mention of this school (I do find mention of it in Russian, though). My question, though, is whether there is a basis for mentioning this school's opinion on the subject. Typically the reason to mention a particular opinion (be it an institution or a person) is that the entity has particular importance relevant to the subject and, either their opinion reflects widespread consensus, or they are so well recognized in the field that even their contrarian opinion deserves mention. It does not look to me like that is the case for this school. Does anybody know more about this?
-- Mcorazao ( talk) 18:29, 4 June 2010 (UTC)
See:
References: ru.wiki.Azerbaijan linguistic school. -- Kiraye ( talk) 19:45, 11 June 2010 (UTC)
I do not have other information Kiraye ( talk) 20:07, 11 June 2010 (UTC)
The article says:
This is wrong, you do not create anything by adding the "indefinite accusative ending" to the root for several reasons:
It's true that the adverb in Arabic is in the accusative form, but only because it's an adverb, it's not an adverb because it's in the accusative!! (then all objects and many other types of words will all become adverbs!!!). Also, Arabic does not avoid the adverb, where did you get that from? there are actually four types of adverbs in Arabic: cognate adverb (مفعول مطلق), locative adverb (مفعول فيه), causative adverb (مفعول له) and the adverb of accompaniment (مفعول معه). I'm not sure what is meant by 'cognate accusative', but it seems like a simple cognate adverb which does not always need an adjective although may be used with one. Mahaodeh ( talk) 21:53, 7 July 2010 (UTC)
The first paragraph says that adverbs can modify adjectives, including numbers. Modify numbers? In what language? I can't think of any examples in European languages, nor can I find anything online that suggests this is indeed the case. Duga3 ( talk) 14:50, 16 July 2011 (UTC)
This page needs work. It needs many more references and may also need to be rewritten in order to sound more credible and professional. Scofield Boy ( talk) 23:59, 2 February 2012 (UTC)
Maybe if this article does get a rewrite (I agree it needs one) then this observation will be superfluous, but the way a noun is defined - as anything which will fit into "The ___ is red" is obviously very imperfect. A lot of mass nouns, abstract nouns and proper nouns won't go in there at all, mainly because of the "the"; but the semantic weirdness of "red" doesn't help either (*"The neighbourliness is red")... I'd suggest something like "(The) ___ is important", but there may be problems with that that I've not thought of. Knole Jonathan ( talk) 13:47, 21 February 2012 (UTC) Also, there are certain non-verbs which will fit into the sentence, admittedly by being a little awkward. The obvious example would be to use an adjective, especially a comparative or superlative, with ellipsis, presuming the noun was in an earlier sentence. "The biggest is red". "The neighbouring is red". JimiQ ( talk) 22:44, 13 September 2016 (UTC)
An IP editor vastly gutted a section this article once had, Adverbs in English, which contained important information as to how the -ly ending used in English came about, which also demonstrated the -like adverb ending used in Appalachian, which demonstrates its roots with other forms of Germanic speech.
The last article old ID containing this information can be found here. I'd restore it myself, but grammar people tend to get rather possessive over such pages (and also regularly engage in cultural prejudice, and try their hardest to eliminate minority dialects...) — ᚹᚩᛞᛖᚾᚻᛖᛚᛗ ( ᚷᛖᛋᛈᚱᛖᚳ) 00:29, 18 December 2012 (UTC)
The following Wikimedia Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion:
Participate in the deletion discussion at the nomination page. — Community Tech bot ( talk) 00:53, 22 April 2020 (UTC)
Surely in a construction like ‘There is a shortage internationally…’ in this article, ‘internationally’ modifies not just the clause ‘there is’ as stated but the noun phrase ‘there is a shortage’, which would mean that this article has it wrong saying that adverbs don’t modify noun phrases (unless we consider ‘internationally’ to be an adjective despite ending in -ly, which seems a bit odd).
Perhaps the clearest example of an adverb modifying a noun phrase is ‘whatever’. If I were to say “There is no point whatever telling Bob” then whatever would modify the noun phrase ‘There is no point’ (even the possible refutation that it modifies ‘telling Bob’ fails due to ‘telling Bob’ being a noun phrase.). I don’t even think it can be used in the standard way, to modify a verb (In ‘Do whatever it takes’, ‘whatever’ is short for ‘whatever thing’ and thus classifies as a pronoun). The fact that ‘whatever’ can be used to answer a question beginning with ‘What’ is also evidence it is a pronoun according to this article, though when used in such a way it is in fact being used as a pronoun.
To summarise, we should modify the article to say that adverbs can be used to modify noun phrases and give ‘whatever’ and ‘internationally’ as examples; failing that, we should clarify that we don’t think adverbs can modify noun phrases and explain that ‘internationally’ (in some of its uses) and ‘whatever’ (in all of its uses where it isn’t a pronoun) are adjectives. Overlordnat1 ( talk) 09:33, 29 November 2021 (UTC)
![]() | This ![]() It is of interest to the following WikiProjects: | ||||||||||||||||||||
|
"Naturally as a sentential adverb means something like "of course" and as a verb-modifying adverb means "in a natural manner". This "naturally" controversy demonstrates that the class of sentential adverbs is a closed class (there is resistance to adding new words to the class), whereas the class of adverbs that modify verbs isn't."
Exactly how does this show that sentential adverbs are a closed class?
Doghatbeef ( talk) 01:04, 15 December 2009 (UTC)
I
Something to do with comparative and superlative, but I can't follow it. Could be improved by someone who can follow it. Ortolan88
Sounds reasonable. Wanna rewrite the para? Someone else as dumb as me might read it and be confused. And, if you do, get wiselier outta there. What's that as...as about? Ortolan88
Hopefully?
Hopefully as a sentence adverb is not shunned simply because some purists decided that it should rather be 'I am hopeful + relative clause'. There is more to it. To quote Eric Partridge:
"hopefully, besides meaning 'in a hopeful way', now often means 'it is hoped'. This new use seems no odder than the corresponding use of adverbs such as naturally: ' Hopefully/Naturally she'll come', but it has aroused the rage of many purists. Those who do use it should at least beware of ambiguity, since 'He will leave tomorrow hopefully' might be interpreted in either way [This is, 'It is hoped (or indeed, I am hopeful) that he will leave tomorrow.', or 'He will leave tomorrow in a hopeful way.']."
(Usage and Abusage: A Guide to Good English, Third Edition, 1999, Penguin Group, London)
Near the beginning of the article it says:
"Alternatively, an adverb may be contained within a sentence element.
An extremely small child entered the room. (SUBJECT + ADVERBIAL + OBJECT +VERB)"
Shouldn't it be:
(ADVERBIAL + SUBJECT + VERB + OBJECT)
I'm putting this here instead of making the change myself because I consider myself weak at grammar and could be missing something. But if I am missing something -- it looks like something explaining in more depth. Because I can't for the life of me see how the sentence ends in a verb.
I was sitting around thinking about useless stuff, as usual, and I began to wonder what kind of adverb 'probably', 'possibly', and 'neccessarily' are. It seems to me that they are conditional adverbs, that is, they describe the conditions under which an action will take place. Another cool one may be 'stochastically', but I can see how this may describe in what manner something is done. 'Hopefully' seems conditional, but there's an extra twist of the speaker's desired outcome or result. Is there an "official" list of kinds of adverbs? Arguments for or against adding conditionals to the Groups of adverbs section?
Firstly, what does the NB mean? Nota bene?
Secondly, is there a list of irregular adverb construction adjectives, as well is for good (instead of goodly?). Thank you. -- Abdull 16:51, 2 January 2006 (UTC)
An adverb is a word that modifies a verb, an adjective, or another adverb. Some irregular [mostly, words that we don't recognize as adverbs] adverbs include: very, well, quite, before, usually, a lot, already, rather, really, more, now, not, why etc. It answers the questions: how, when, where, to what extent, or how often.
english class: i need an easier way to explain adverbs.
( Smillar 17:31, 10 January 2006 (UTC)) goodbye
I don't understand how an adverb can modify an entire sentence. In the examples listed on the page, it appears (to me) that only the verb is being modified. Isopropyl 21:53, 5 April 2006 (UTC)
I recently came across a rather strange construction when I was reading a book that explained the usage of adverbs. The sentence was "... a really astronomical figure..." As far as I know, ttwo constructions would be possible: ".... a real astronomical figure..." or " really an astronomical figure.." My question is: which of the two is the correct one? Is it possible to use the first construction?
Teacher Adriano
Order of Adverbs is needed.
Is it possible to have one "-ly" adverb modifying another? For example, can we say: "The bus travelled fairly slowly."
I remember reading that the construction of adverbs in modern Romance languages (that is, adding -ment(e) to the end of the feminine adjective comes from a form or phrase in Greek (perhaps early medieval/late Koine) in which one combines the adjective with the word for "mind (ment/e from the Latin mens). Therefore to do something exactly is do something with and exact mind(exacta+mente). Is there any validity to this? I know this is not how adverbs were formed in Latin, but I do not speak any form of Greek, ancient or otherwise and it's been bugging me for a while. 201.21.96.49 19:15, 9 March 2007 (UTC)
Wouldn't it be more correct to say that someone "spelled the word incorrect" rather than "incorrectly", because by saying that person spelled it "incorrectly" is to say that the mechanism which allows he or she to spell is broken (as in, the physical action the person used to spell the word was incorrect)? And no, I couldn't find a simpler way to form that question. ~ thesublime514 • talk • sign 20:17, 8 April 2007 (UTC)
Whatever the above is all about, I've got an issue with the nonchalant parenthetical claim in the article that English grammar is "derived from Latin". I would call that, at best, misleading and poorly worded. It gives the impression that English would not have grammar if it weren't for Latin. I'm struggling to find anywhere on the Wiki a more substantial claim to this effect (that English grammar is derived from Latin grammar). English is no more derived from Latin than dogs are derived from saber-toothed cats, but in both cases the one is similar to the other because they share a common ancestor. If I don't get some arguments to the contrary pretty soon, I'll remove the clause. Tsunomaru 12:40, 21 May 2007 (UTC)
In its current state the article says that adverbs can't modify nouns, but I've seen (outdated?) grammar books that disagree. Think of only in The blade scratched only the boy, which certainly appears to be modifying the boy (the meaning is quite different from The blade only scratched the boy). And it isn't acting like a typical adjective, since it's positioned before the article the. How would modern linguists describe what's happening here? 61.196.81.225 06:38, 3 August 2007 (UTC)
Among the examples of adverbs modifying nouns we have the sentence "There is a shortage internationally of protein for animal feeds." I believe this is not an example of an adverb modifying a noun at all, as it seems clear to me that in this sentence "internationally" is modifying "is". Perhaps it would be better moved to the example group below, for predicative expressions? 71.63.69.193 ( talk) 14:48, 4 October 2015 (UTC)
I'm struggling to think of an instance where an adverb answers a why? question. Should that be in the list? If so could someone provide an example? Matt 01:49, 15 February 2008 (UTC).
I modified and ultimately removed this passage (my modified version below):
I judged that it led too far afield from the topic at hand. Mark Foskey ( talk) 17:34, 6 April 2009 (UTC)00:21, 11 May 2009 (UTC)00:21, 11 May 2009 (UTC) 68.78.139.90 ( talk) 00:21, 11 May 2009 (UTC)
My complaint is that whatever it is that this person has written, the meaning is not clear at all. The opening sections should always be written in an easily understood form.
An editor recently added
"The Azerbaijani linguistic school" did not consider adverb independent part of speech, since that it is adverbializotion version of the other parts of speech. [sic]
Another editor expanded on this a little more. I am not a linguist by any means. But hunting around Google I don't find any English language mention of this school (I do find mention of it in Russian, though). My question, though, is whether there is a basis for mentioning this school's opinion on the subject. Typically the reason to mention a particular opinion (be it an institution or a person) is that the entity has particular importance relevant to the subject and, either their opinion reflects widespread consensus, or they are so well recognized in the field that even their contrarian opinion deserves mention. It does not look to me like that is the case for this school. Does anybody know more about this?
-- Mcorazao ( talk) 18:29, 4 June 2010 (UTC)
See:
References: ru.wiki.Azerbaijan linguistic school. -- Kiraye ( talk) 19:45, 11 June 2010 (UTC)
I do not have other information Kiraye ( talk) 20:07, 11 June 2010 (UTC)
The article says:
This is wrong, you do not create anything by adding the "indefinite accusative ending" to the root for several reasons:
It's true that the adverb in Arabic is in the accusative form, but only because it's an adverb, it's not an adverb because it's in the accusative!! (then all objects and many other types of words will all become adverbs!!!). Also, Arabic does not avoid the adverb, where did you get that from? there are actually four types of adverbs in Arabic: cognate adverb (مفعول مطلق), locative adverb (مفعول فيه), causative adverb (مفعول له) and the adverb of accompaniment (مفعول معه). I'm not sure what is meant by 'cognate accusative', but it seems like a simple cognate adverb which does not always need an adjective although may be used with one. Mahaodeh ( talk) 21:53, 7 July 2010 (UTC)
The first paragraph says that adverbs can modify adjectives, including numbers. Modify numbers? In what language? I can't think of any examples in European languages, nor can I find anything online that suggests this is indeed the case. Duga3 ( talk) 14:50, 16 July 2011 (UTC)
This page needs work. It needs many more references and may also need to be rewritten in order to sound more credible and professional. Scofield Boy ( talk) 23:59, 2 February 2012 (UTC)
Maybe if this article does get a rewrite (I agree it needs one) then this observation will be superfluous, but the way a noun is defined - as anything which will fit into "The ___ is red" is obviously very imperfect. A lot of mass nouns, abstract nouns and proper nouns won't go in there at all, mainly because of the "the"; but the semantic weirdness of "red" doesn't help either (*"The neighbourliness is red")... I'd suggest something like "(The) ___ is important", but there may be problems with that that I've not thought of. Knole Jonathan ( talk) 13:47, 21 February 2012 (UTC) Also, there are certain non-verbs which will fit into the sentence, admittedly by being a little awkward. The obvious example would be to use an adjective, especially a comparative or superlative, with ellipsis, presuming the noun was in an earlier sentence. "The biggest is red". "The neighbouring is red". JimiQ ( talk) 22:44, 13 September 2016 (UTC)
An IP editor vastly gutted a section this article once had, Adverbs in English, which contained important information as to how the -ly ending used in English came about, which also demonstrated the -like adverb ending used in Appalachian, which demonstrates its roots with other forms of Germanic speech.
The last article old ID containing this information can be found here. I'd restore it myself, but grammar people tend to get rather possessive over such pages (and also regularly engage in cultural prejudice, and try their hardest to eliminate minority dialects...) — ᚹᚩᛞᛖᚾᚻᛖᛚᛗ ( ᚷᛖᛋᛈᚱᛖᚳ) 00:29, 18 December 2012 (UTC)
The following Wikimedia Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion:
Participate in the deletion discussion at the nomination page. — Community Tech bot ( talk) 00:53, 22 April 2020 (UTC)
Surely in a construction like ‘There is a shortage internationally…’ in this article, ‘internationally’ modifies not just the clause ‘there is’ as stated but the noun phrase ‘there is a shortage’, which would mean that this article has it wrong saying that adverbs don’t modify noun phrases (unless we consider ‘internationally’ to be an adjective despite ending in -ly, which seems a bit odd).
Perhaps the clearest example of an adverb modifying a noun phrase is ‘whatever’. If I were to say “There is no point whatever telling Bob” then whatever would modify the noun phrase ‘There is no point’ (even the possible refutation that it modifies ‘telling Bob’ fails due to ‘telling Bob’ being a noun phrase.). I don’t even think it can be used in the standard way, to modify a verb (In ‘Do whatever it takes’, ‘whatever’ is short for ‘whatever thing’ and thus classifies as a pronoun). The fact that ‘whatever’ can be used to answer a question beginning with ‘What’ is also evidence it is a pronoun according to this article, though when used in such a way it is in fact being used as a pronoun.
To summarise, we should modify the article to say that adverbs can be used to modify noun phrases and give ‘whatever’ and ‘internationally’ as examples; failing that, we should clarify that we don’t think adverbs can modify noun phrases and explain that ‘internationally’ (in some of its uses) and ‘whatever’ (in all of its uses where it isn’t a pronoun) are adjectives. Overlordnat1 ( talk) 09:33, 29 November 2021 (UTC)