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Information about Adverbial

In grammar an adverbial is a word (an adverb) or a group of words (an adverbial phrase or an adverbial clause) which modifies or tells us something about the sentence or the verb. The word adverbial is also used as an adjective, meaning 'having the same function as an adverb'. Look at the examples below:

Danny speaks fluently. (telling us more about the verb)


Adverbials operate at sentence level as sentence elements, as in the example below:

Lorna ate breakfast yesterday morning. (SUBJECT + VERB + OBJECT + ADVERBIAL)

The form of adverbials

In English, adverbials most commonly take the form of adverbs, adverb phrases, temporal noun phrases or prepositional phrases. Many types of adverbials (for instance reason and condition) are often expressed by clauses).
James answered immediately. (adverb)
James answered in English. (prepositional phrase)
James answered this morning. (noun phrase)
James answered in English because he had a foreign visitor. (adverbial clause)
An adverbial is a construction that modifies, or describes, verbs. When an adverbial modifies a verb, it changes the meaning of that verb. Not only does an adverb, one of the forms listed below in the chart, modify a verb, but there are other words and word groups that do also. For example, a prepositional phrase, an infinitive phrase, and a nominal clause can all modify verbs.

In every sentence pattern, the adverbial tells where, when, why, how, etc. There can be more than one adverbial in a sentence. Also, there is not a certain slot fixed for adverbials. They are movable.

One way to analyze sentence structure is to think in terms of form and function. Form refers to a word class--such as noun, verb, adjective, adverb, and preposition--as well as types of phrases, such as prepositional phrase, nominal clause, and adverbial clause. Function refers to the function of the form in a sentence. For example, the function of a prepositional phrase in a sentence may be adverbial; that is, it modifies a verb.

Adverbial: a phrase or clause that functions as a clause element answering questions such as 'When?', 'Where?', 'How?'. There are three major classes of adverbials: circumstace, stance and linking. circumstance adverbial (time, place, result)

Types of adverbials which form sentence elements

Adverbials are typically divided into four classes:

adverbial complements (i.e. obligatory adverbial): these are adverbials that render a sentence ungrammatical and meaningless if removed.

John put the flowers in a vase.


adjuncts: these are part of the core meaning of the sentence, but if omitted still leave a meaningful sentence.

John helped me with my homework.


conjuncts: these link two sentences together.

John helped so. I was, therefore, able to do my homework.


disjuncts: these make comments on the meaning of the rest of the sentence.

Surprisingly, he passed all of his exams.

Distinguishing an adverbial from an adjunct

All adjuncts are adverbials, but some adverbials are not adjuncts.
  • If the removal of an adverbial does not leave a well-formed sentence, then it is not an adjunct
  • If the adverbial modifies within a sentence element, and is not a sentence element in its own right, it is not an adjunct.
  • If the adverbial is not grammatically tied to the sentence it is not an adjunct, e.g.
Mr Reninson, however, voted against the proposal. (adverbial conjunct not adjunct)

Other types of adverbials

Directional and locative particles

"In", "out", and other prepositions may be used adverbially to indicate direction or location:
  • Superman flew in (directional)
  • Are you in? (locative)
  • The car drove out (directional)
  • The ball is out (locative)

Negators

In some models of grammar negators such as "not" and "never" are considered adverbs and their function that of negating adverbial.

Expletives

Often ignored, expletives may take up many adverbial syntactic functions. Pragmatically and semantically, they often serve as intensifiers, boosting the content of the clause they appear in.
  • What the hell are you talking about?
  • I didn't bloody well do that!
  • You're freaking lying!
  • You bloody well know that smoking's not allowed here!
  • He got sodding killed.

See also

Grammar is the study of the rules governing the use of a given natural language, and as such a field of linguistics. Traditionally, grammar included morphology and syntax, in modern linguistics commonly expanded by the subfields of phonetics, phonology, orthography, semantics, and
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adverb is a part of speech. It is any word that modifies any other part of language: verbs, adjectives (including numbers), clauses, sentences and other adverbs, except for nouns; modifiers of nouns are primarily determiners and adjectives.
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In grammar, a phrase is a group of words that functions as a single unit in the syntax of a sentence.

For example the house at the end of the street (example 1) is a phrase. It acts like a noun.
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In grammar, a clause is a word or group of words ordinarily consisting of a subject and a predicate, although in some languages and some types of clauses, the subject may not appear explicitly. (This is especially common in null subject languages.
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In linguistics, a sentence is a unit of language, characterized in most languages by the presence of a finite verb. For example, "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.
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verb is a word belonging to the part of speech that usually denotes an action (bring, read), an occurrence (decompose, glitter), or a state of being (exist, stand).
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Sentence elements are the groups of words that combine together to comprise the ‘building units’ of a well-formed sentence. A sentence element approach to grammar assumes a top-down methodology.
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In linguistics, an adpositional phrase is a general term that includes prepositional phrases (which are usually found in head-first languages like English) and postpositional phrases (usually found in head-final languages like Dutch).
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In grammar, a clause is a word or group of words ordinarily consisting of a subject and a predicate, although in some languages and some types of clauses, the subject may not appear explicitly. (This is especially common in null subject languages.
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An adverbial complement is an adverbial that is obligatorily subcategorized for by a verb, such that if removed, it will yield an ungrammatical sentence:
  • She put the cheese back
  • *She put the cheese
Adverbial complements of caused motion verbs like put
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adjunct is a sentence element that establishes the circumstances in which the action or state expressed by the verb take place.

The following sentence uses adjuncts of time and place:
Yesterday Lorna saw the dog in the garden.

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In linguistics, the term conjunct has two distinct uses:
  • A conjunct is an adverbial adjunct that adds information to the sentence that not considered part of the propositional content (or at least not essential) but which connects the sentence with previous parts of

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The term disjunct can refer to:
  • logical disjunction
  • In astrology, the term disjunct, or quincunx is an aspect made when two planets are 150 degrees, or five signs apart.

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negation bears a much wider range of functions and meanings than it does in logic, where the interpretation of signs for negation is constrained by axioms to a few standard options, typically just the classical definition and a few schemes of intuitionism.
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