What is an adverb? (Linguistics)

Definition
	Here are two senses for adverb:
	An adverb, narrowly defined, is a word belonging to a class of words which modify verbs for such categories as time manner place, or direction. An adverb, broadly defined, is a word belonging to a class of words which modify any constituent class of words other than nouns, such as verbs adjectives adverbs phrases clauses, or sentences. Under this definition, the possible type of modification depends on the class of the constituent being modified.

Discussion
	The general class adverb is a mixture of very different kinds of words, which cover a wide range of semantic concepts and whose syntactic distribution is disparate. The definition of the lexical category adverb is language-specific, based on syntactic distribution.
	Many words traditionally called adverbs in English, such as degree words (very, awfully) and negatives (not), are set up as distinct word-classes in linguistic studies.

Examples (English)
	He went fast. She slowly shut the door. Nearly in a rage, he left.

Kinds
	Here are some kinds of adverbs:
	What is a conjunctive adverb? What is a sentence adverb?

Generic
	An adverb is a kind of
	What is a word?

Sources
	Crystal 1980 17
	Hartmann and Stork 1972 6
	Schachter 1985 20
	Mish 1991 59

Context for this page:

Concept module: adverb
In overview module: Glossary (Linguistics): A
In modular book: Glossary of linguistic terms, by Eugene E. Loos (general editor), Susan Anderson (editor), Dwight H., Day, Jr. (editor), Paul C. Jordan (editor), and J. Douglas Wingate (editor)
In bookshelf: Linguistics

This page is an extract from the LinguaLinks Library, Version 5.0 published on CD-ROM by SIL International, 2003. [Ordering information.]

Page content last modified: 5 January 2004

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