Talk:Adverb

message: 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 think it should be analyzed as (SUBJECT + PREDICATOR (OR VERB) + OBJECT). And then on the phrase level it should be explained that the adverb "extremely" is a premodifier of "small" and together they form an adjectival phrase which is a premodifier of "child". Mixing sentence elements (subject, object) and parts of phrases is in my opinion a very bad option.
:Besides, I cannot understand how "well" in the sentence "They treated her well." can be analyzed as subject (as it is stated in the article). The subject in this clause is "they"; "well" is an adverbial adjunct of manner.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 89.143.34.28 (talk) 19:39, 17 January 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Grammar Mistake? 

message: 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)
thread_title:  List 

message: english class:   i need an easier way to explain adverbs.
(Smillar 17:31, 10 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  hello 

message: 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
:I consider the very first one ("a really astronomical figure") correct. To make sure, I consulted the Merriam-Webster dictionary, and it gives this example for the "really" entry:
:was a really beautiful morning
:"real" is not an adverb in standard usage.
:--Sebesta 18:36, 6 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I think he means a real astronomical figure, where "real" would be an adjective equivalent to "actual". Adriano, in the sense that astronomical means "large", the original sentence is correct in stating that it's "a really large figure". Isopropyl 20:38, 6 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Really is used there as a comparative.  It answers: How astronomical? Very. — robbiemuffin page talk 15:03, 8 June 2008 (UTC)

text: Adverbs of time 196.188.126.74 (talk) 03:16, 8 November 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Adverbs 

message: Is it possible to have one "-ly" adverb modifying another?
For example, can we say: "The bus travelled fairly slowly."
::Yes, in English "fairly slowly" is OK, as is "surprisingly quickly." Other adverbs are more picky, however, so for example, "extremely probably" is very clumsy, as well as "fairly luckily."  In other languages, like Italian, adverbs ending in -mente can't be modified by other adverbs, if these also end in -mente. So  in Italian, there is a big difference between "estremamente spesso" (`extremely often'), which is fine, because "spesso" doesn't end in -mente,  and "estremamente frequenatmente" (`extremely frequently'), which is completely impossible. Nobody really knows how to characterize what's going on in English, but a rough rule would be that manner or frequency adverbs, like "often," "frequently," "quickly," etc. can be so modified, while modal adverbs, like "probably" etc. can't. Another test would be whether one can question the adverb with "how" as in How frequently do you visit your mom? This doesn't work at all with modal or evidential adverbs, e.g. "*how usually do you visit your mom?" or "*How probably will the Republicans win?" or "*How evidently is Bob a genius?" Again, nobody really knows why this is, but if you can get the feeling for which adverbs can be questioned in this way, then it's probably safer to abstain from modifying those that can't with an -ly adverb.
::Neither 02:29, 27 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Adverbs modifying adverbs

message: 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)
thread_title: Question about usage

message: 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)
replies: text: Update: did so. Tsunomaru 11:04, 3 June 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Derived from Latin 

message: :"Adverbs typically answer questions such as how?, when?, where?, why? and to what extent?"
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)
thread_title:  Adverbs telling why 

message: I modified and ultimately removed this passage (my modified version below):
:which still shows up in the term Lychgate for the churchyard gate through which the body would be carried during a funeral procession. 
I judged that it led too far afield from the topic at hand. Mark Foskey (talk) 17:34, 6 April 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Lychgate 

message: An editor recently added
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)
replies: text: Those are all nice but they don't answer the questions I asked above. --Mcorazao (talk) 20:00, 11 June 2010 (UTC)
thread_title: Azerbaijani linguistic school

message: The article says:
:::Modern Standard Arabic forms adverbs by adding the indefinite accusative ending '-an' to the root. For example, kathiir-, "many", becomes kathiiran "much". However, Arabic often avoids adverbs by using a cognate accusative plus an adjective.
This is wrong, you do not create anything by adding the "indefinite accusative ending" to the root for several reasons:
# The root is not a word to start with, it is only three letters out of which the words are created. for the above example (kathiir) the root is k-th-r.
# There is not one 'accusative ending', actually, it's not always merely an ending - it's an accusative form.
# The accusative in Arabic does not only apply to nouns but also to verbs and pronouns, which cannot become adverbs.
# You can have definite adverbs, in which case you can not use the indefinite accusative ending (noonation).
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)
thread_title:  Errors in Arabic Adverbs 

message: 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)
replies: text: How about: There was only one person there. It cost about five thousand pounds. 90.220.14.240 (talk) 22:24, 10 September 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Adverbs modifying numbers 

message: 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)
thread_title:  Needs references and a rewrite 

message: 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)
thread_title:  Definition of a noun 

message: 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)
replies: text: I think that IP's fairly random gutting was reverted; it was actually I who finally removed this material, in this edit. The reason was noted in the edit summary - for an article that is supposed to be about adverbs in general, across languages, it was overdominated by some tiny etymological detail about English. I think I moved the salient facts to the Adverbs section of the English grammar page. The detail of the etymology of -ly can be found in the -ly article. Victor Yus (talk) 08:58, 18 December 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: I see. That would make sense. But info about Appalachian's -like ending is still absent from those pages. An example would be "the frame was installed crookedlike", instead of "crookedly". I'd demonstrated how -like and -ly are related and ultimately of the same origin. Wodenhelm (Talk) 05:45, 19 December 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: The bit about Appalachian is currently in a footnote in the -ly article; I didn't think it was a particularly significant bit of information. But I won't object if you want to make it a bit more prominent again (and it would be good to give an example, like the one you just mentioned). Victor Yus (talk) 08:54, 19 December 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Information about Appalachian English adverb usage has been lost from the article 

message: The following Wikimedia Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion:
* English-English dictionaries and thesaurus books.JPG
Participate in the deletion discussion at the nomination page. —Community Tech bot (talk) 00:53, 22 April 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  A Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion 

message: 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)
thread_title:  Adverbs Modifying Noun Phrases