Adverbs

Read the following sentences: 

• Brad writes beautifully. 
• Monica is a very nice person. 
• Karl explained it quite clearly. 
• In the sentence Brad writes beautifully, the word beautifully shows how Brad writes; that is beautifully modifies the verb writes. 
• In the sentence Monica is a very nice person, the word very shows how much nice Monica is that is, very modifies the adjective nice. 

These words modify the verbs and adjectives called adverbs. 

• But in the sentence, Karl explained it quite clearly, the words quite show how far Karl explained it clearly. Here, the word quite modifies the word clearly which itself is an adverb. 

So, we have come across instances where an adverb had modified a verb, an adjective, and another adverb. 

This shows that an adverb is a word that modifies the meaning of a verb, an adjective, and another adverb.  

According to their meaning, adverbs can be classified into different kinds. Let us take a look at them. 

Kinds of Adverbs 

1. Adverbs of Time: 

Adverbs of the time describe when the action occurred. Although many prepositions indicate when something happened, they are always followed by objects, making it easy to identify when a word is an adverb. 

Examples: 

• I have read this book before. 
• Katie recently relocated to France. 
• I have not heard from him lately. 
• You haven’t contacted me since. 

2. Adverbs of Frequency: 

Adverbs of frequency show us how often something happens, like: 

• She called me twice. 

• They seldom come here. 
• The landlord called again. 
• I have seen this movie once. 

3. Adverbs of Place: 

Adverbs of places show us where the action has taken place. We easily tend to mix them up with prepositions, which describe where nouns are located. As mentioned earlier, prepositions are followed by objects, whereas place adverbs are not. 

Examples: 

• Come here. 
• The puppy followed me everywhere. 
• I looked up. 
• The car raced away. 

4. Adverbs of Manner: 

Adverbs of manner describe how or in what manner something was the action done. The adverbs that end with -generally come under this category. 

Examples: 

• Martha writes brilliantly. 
• Rick works hard. 
• I slept soundly last night. 
• The novel is well written. 

5. Adverbs of Degree: 

Adverbs of degree quantity provide us with information about the intensity of the verb in the sentence. They describe how much, or in what degree, or to what extent something has occurred, like: 

• We are fully prepared. 
• She is altogether mistaken. 
• The apple is almost ripe. 
• We are so glad that you have come. 

Adverbs and Sentences: 

Some adverbs can modify entire sentences. They usually stand at the beginning of the sentences to modify the entire sentence, rather than a particular word. Unsurprisingly, they are known as sentence adverbs. Typical examples of sentence adverbs include, fortunately, generally, interestingly, appropriately, etc. Sentence adverbs describe a general feeling about all of the information in the sentence rather than a specific thing in the sentence. 

Examples: 

• Fortunately, I was able to make it just before time. 
• Luckily, I escaped without getting caught. 
• Probably, you are mistaken.