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Faculdade de Letras
Evaluation.
April 1999
English III
Turmas 3 & 4
Continual
THE GRAMMAR OF ADVERBIALS.
Please refer to SGE (A Student’s Grammar) for full explanation of Adverbials.
The relevant chapters are Chs 8, 14& 15.
1) What is an adverbial?
An adverbial is a sentence or clause element , although this is not always obvious.
There are five main clause elements, S V C (subdivided into Subject Complement and
Object Complement), O (subdivided into Direct and Indirect Object), and A
(Adverbial). Of the above sentence elements, only S & V are obligatory. Some
clauses do not require C, O or A . However, the A element is more flexible than the
others, in that it can 1) be composed of more forms, 2) fulfil more functions, 3) appear
in more clause or sentence positions than the others, 4) and be either optional or
essential. Moreover, 5) there can be any number of adverbials in the same sentence, {see example in SGE 8:1}.
It is called an adverbial because it is most closely linked to the verb (V) element in that
it gives extra information which expands that supplied by the verb element. In the
sentence “We are going now” the word “now” ‘expands’ the information supplied by
the verb phrase “are going”.
Here is part of a definition of an adverbial (Greenbaum “Oxford English Grammar”):“An adverbial is an optional element in sentence or clause structure. There may be
more than one adverbial in a sentence or clause.”
A second definition comes from Jackson H. “Grammar and Meaning”:- “The
functional slot in a sentence typically filled by an adverb or prepositional phrase
relating to circumstance.” I might add:- “these functional slots are often filled by either
finite or non-finite subordinate clauses, or even noun phrases.”
2) Are all adverbs adverbials?
No. Two examples will suffice to show this. a) “Yesterday turned out fine”.
“Yesterday” is an adverb (or some consider it a noun like ‘last night’), and obviously,
as S element in the above sentence, it is fulfilling the function of a noun phrase and not
that of an adverbial. b) “I thought the film was terribly funny, so I think you are quite
wrong to say it was a bore.” In b) there are two adverbs, “terribly” and “quite”. Both
are modifying adjectives here, because “terribly funny” is an adjectival phrase acting as
complement of the verb “was”, and “quite wrong” is another adjectival phrase acting
as complement of “are”.
Other adverbs can be on the borderline between full adverbials and semi-adverbials.
For example, in the sentence “I don’t really know” , it is difficult to conceive the
adverb “really” as fulfilling the function of a full clause element in its own right. SGE
would call it a SUBJUNCT, but its function is merely to give a little extra emphasis to
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the fact of “not knowing”. It can hardly be said to convey the same meaning as “Really,
I don’t know.” See SGE 8:32 ff., especially 8:36 &8:37.
3) Do all adverbials have to contain an adverb or adverbs?
No. We stated in Section 1) above that the adverbial can consist of more forms than
other clause elements. It can be a noun phrase, as in “They only arrived last night.”
It can be a prepositional phrase, a non-finite clause, or a subordinate finite clause.
None of these need contain an adverb. Note the following examples:Prepositional phrase:- “They won’t be coming on Wednesday ……
Finite clause:- ……..even though they promised.”
Non-finite clause
“To be on the safe side, they are delaying their trip until next
month.”
(Note there are two adverbials in the last example, the second adverbial
being a prepositional phrase.)
4) What do we mean when we say that an adverbial can be either essential or
optional?
Consider the sentence, “I found this book on the table.” Compare it with:- “She put
this book on the table.”
It does not take much thinking to decide which of these
adverbials “on the table” is optional, and which is essential. It makes no sense at all to
say “She put this book”, because it requires the adverbial element as an essential
ingredient to complete the clause. In this case the adverbial can be described as an
adverbial complement or an obligatory adverbial, for some might argue that it has the
dual role of both an object complement and an adverbial. (Q. & G. Call it obligatory
adverbial). On the other hand, “I found this book” makes complete grammatical sense
in itself, and although you might argue that the listener will want to know where it was
found, in grammatical terms it is not necessary to convey the extra information by
adding the adverbial.
5) What are ADJUNCTS, CONJUNCTS, SUBJUNCTS AND DISJUNCTS?
They are all different forms of adverbials, which you can read about in SGE Ch. 8.
Read SGE 8:12 ff. The main ones that concern us this year are ADJUNCTS and
CONJUNCTS. The others are important, but perhaps not so much as these two
categories.
6) What, then, are ADJUNCTS?
The majority of adverbials are adjuncts. These, more than the other three types of
adverbials, can be said to be nearest in grammatical properties to the other major
sentence /clause elements. Read SGE 8:12 – 8:31.
They may be a single word, a
phrase, or a finite or non-finite clause.
They may also be either SENTENCE
ADJUNCTS or PREDICATION ADJUNCTS. They may be optional elements or
obligatory elements.
Let us take the sentence “In the morning I had my breakfast in a corner of the hotel
dining room”{See Jackson 1990:151}. There are two adverbials here. Both are
adjuncts. Neither is obligatory, though one might argue that the first is less essential
grammatically than the second. “In the morning” refers to or gives information about
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the whole of the rest of the sentence. For that reason it is more loosely attached to the
sentence than the second adverbial. It is therefore a SENTENCE ADJUNCT and can be
placed either at I (initial position, or at E (end position) or at M (mid-position.) - i.e. “I
had my breakfast in a corner of the hotel dining room in the morning.” (or) “I had my
breakfast in the morning in a corner of the hotel dining room.”
However, we cannot do this with the second adverbial “in a corner of the hotel diningroom”, which is less flexible in position. It is a PREDICATION ADJUNCT because it
refers only to the predication of the sentence, “had my breakfast”. Try writing “In a
corner of the hotel dining room I had my breakfast in the morning”, and you will see
that it sounds very unnatural, if not wrong. So predication adjuncts, being closely
related semantically to the predicate, are more fixed in position and usually if not
always follow the verb they modify.
7) What are CONJUNCTS?
Conjuncts are sentence adverbials, such as furthermore, therefore, in addition, however,
and many others.See full list in SGE pp185-187 (8:44ff). They usually appear in
initial position (I), though not always. They usually consist of a single adverb or a
prepositional phrase, e.g. “in the first place”.
They link ideas or themes from the
previous sentence with those of their own, but they cannot grammatically join two
sentences to form one. E.g. it is wrong to write “Sheila was very hostile towards him,
therefore she refused to speak to him.” We must separate the two clauses with a full
stop and a capital letter for “Therefore”.
The task of joining sentences or clauses grammatically in order to link ideas and themes
falls to CONJUNCTIONS, either co-ordinating or subordinating, and there is a full list
of these in SGE 266-271 {co-ordinating},13:10 – 13:16, and also SGE 288-290
{subordinating}, 14:7 – 14:9. These sections should be read carefully.
Greenbaum’s definition of conjuncts is as follows:- “Conjuncts are sentence adverbials
that indicate logical relationships between sentences or between clauses. They are
mainly adverbs (e.g. therefore, however, nevertheless) or prepositional phrases (e.g. on
the other hand, in consequence, in conclusion).
8) What are DISJUNCTS and SUBJUNCTS?
These are adverbials having other functions, and perhaps we can say they (especially
subjuncts) have minor functions compared with adjuncts and conjuncts. However,
though there is little time this semester to deal with them, they are worth reading about
and studying, as they are in FREQUENT use, and the ability to use them flexibly will
improve your English. They are to be found in SGE Ch 8 pp 176 – 184.,- 8:32 – 8:42.
9) What is a COMPLEX SENTENCE?
The answer to this question forms the basis of SGE Ch 14, and very much involves the
use of adverbials which are subordinate clauses, usually prefaced by subordinating
conjunctions such as although; if; even though; because; despite the fact that; and many
others (see list). If there is time, we will deal with this section. See the 2nd article.