5. Overview: Adverbials placement


Imagen de maniacyak en Flickr
bajo licencia CC

In the sentences below you can see highlighted adverbs providing information about how, where or when something is or was done.

  • Alan learns easily.
  • Sean explained Irish history in a friendly way.
  • The Troubles were conflicts which took place in Northern Ireland.
  • German and British soldiers walked past the trenches.
  • Dover is more than 100 kilometres away from London.
  • The Irish Civil War broke out in 1922.
  • Fianna Fail won the elections easily in Ireland in 1932.
  • St. Patrick went around Ireland patiently after being a slave.

Reflexión

Look at the sentences above and answer the following questions related to adverbs:

 

1. Where do we normally place adverbs of manner, place and time in a sentence?

2. Are all adverbs of manner formed by adding -ly?

3. In English, there are different types of adverbials of place: location, direction and distance. Can you give examples from the sentences above?

4. In the last two sentences we have more than one adverb placed at the end, which is the correct word order?

Reflexión

For each of the following sentences, place the adverbs given in brackets in their most usual position in the sentence.

 

1. We will review our options (tomorrow / carefully)

2. We pick the flowers. (carefully / usually)

3. He is wrong. (however / seldom)

4. We found the hotel. (last night / easily / nevertheless)

5. They left. (quietly / this morning)

6. They will be. (next month / on business / in France)

7. The children whispered. (on Christmas Eve / excitedly / in front of the tree)

8. The moon shone. (over the water / long after the sun had set / brilliantly)

9.  He lived. (for six years / happily / in Copenhagen)

10. They returned. (from Holland / last week / unexpectedly)

SOURCE: http://www.wordpower.ws/grammar/gramex24.html#5

Pregunta Verdadero-Falso

 Say if the following statements are True or False according to the information provided in this link:

Adverbs: position in a sentence

Pregunta 1

1. Adverbs are words used to modify verbs, adjectives or other adverbs.

Pregunta 2

2. The adverb enough is placed following the adjective it modifies.

Pregunta 3

3. The intensifiers do not modify verbs.

Pregunta 4

4. The beginning position of a clause is never occupied by an adverb of frequency.

Pregunta 5

5. The adverbs of frequency precede the auxiliary verb used in short answers.

Pregunta 6

6. The adverbs sometimes and sometime are adverbs of frequency.

Pregunta 7

7. In the following sentence the adverb is not placed in the correct position: I want to carefully consider the situation

Pregunta 8

8. Irrespective of its position, a connecting adverb is usually separated by commas from the rest of the sentence.

Pregunta 9

9. The most usual order of the different types of adverbs in the end position of a clause when the verb is not a verb of motion is as follows: Adverb of Manner + Adverb of Location + Adverb of Time + Adverb of Purpose.

Pregunta 10

10. The adverbs of location here and there cannot be placed at the beginning of a clause whose verb is to be.

Pregunta 11

11. Only one of these two sentences is correct:

      a. Up the hill went the train.

      b. Up the hill it went.

Pregunta 12

12. If a clause begins with a negative adverb, inverted word order must be used.


Imagen de HA! Designs en Flickr bajo licencia CC

To practise the position of adverbs in the sentence do these exercises.

By doing them you will realize if you have understood the grammar information

you have read above.