Here are some familiar English words that end in
–ly
: word class structure daily dangerously early family finally homely hopefully
Italy lavishly lively lovely lovingly mainly manly quickly silly
Q1. These words don’t all belong to the same word class. Some of them are nouns
(like dog or idea ), some are adjectives (like big or exact ) and others are adverbs (like soon or very
). Write ‘N’, ‘Adj’ or ‘Adv’ in the second column to show each word’s class.
Q2. Some of these words are built out of a shorter word to which the affix
–ly
has been added (as darkness is built, for example, by adding
–ness
to the adjective dark ).
The words built in this way have a structure consisting of the shorter word + ly. For the words that have a structure, write ‘N + ly’, ‘Adj + ly’ or ‘Adv + ly’, according to the word class of the shorter word.
Q3. When we add affixes to words, we follow rules which say what word classes the shorter and longer words belong to; for example, -ness is added to an adjective to make it into a noun. We can write the rule like this:
Adj + ness = N
What are the two rules that most of the structured words in the table follow?
Rule 1
Rule 2
Q4. One word in the table is an exception. What is it, and what rule does it follow?
Word: Rule:
Q5. One of the rules produces longer words that the other rule might add -ly to.
Explain what happens when you try to apply both rules in this way to the same word, and why.
What happens?
Why?

Q1, 2 (4 marks each: @ ¼ per word) daily dangerously early family finally homely friendly word class
Adj
Adv
Adj
N
Adv
Adj
Adj structure
N + ly
Adj + ly
[no structure]
[no structure]
Adj + ly
N + ly
N + ly hopefully
Italy lavishly lively lovingly mainly manly
Adv
N
Adv
Adj
Adv
Adv
Adj
Adv
Adj
Adj + ly
[no structure]
Adj + ly
Adj + ly
Adj + ly
Adj + ly
N + ly
Adj + ly
[no structure] quickly silly
Q3. (4 marks: @ 2 per rule)
Rule 1/2
Rule 2/1
N + ly = Adj
Adj + ly = Adv
Q4. (4 marks: 2 for word, 2 for rule)
Word: lively Rule: Adj + ly = Adj
Q5. (4 marks: 2 for clash, 2 for explanation)
What happens?
Why?
‘Adj + ly = N’ doesn’t apply to adjectives produced by ‘N + ly
= Adj’.
Because we don’t allow the same affix to occur twice in the same word