5/ The adverb.

(1) The meaning of the adverb as a part of speech is hard to define. Indeed, some adverbs indicate time or place of an action (yesterday, here), while others indicate its property (quickly) and others again the degree of a property (very). As, however, we should look for one central meaning characterizing the part of speech as a whole, it seems best to formulate the meaning of the adverb as "property of an action or of a property".

(2) Form. Adverbs are invariable. Some of them, however, have degrees of comparison (fast, faster, and fastest).

(3) Function, (a) An adverb combines with a verb (run quickly), with an adjective (very long), occasionally with a noun (the then president) and with a phrase (so out of things), (b) An adverb can sometimes follow a preposition (from there), (c) In a sentence an adverb is almost always an adverbial modifier, or part of it (from there), but it may occasionally be an attribute.

1. Meaning: they express the degree of a property, property of an action, circumstances under which an action takes place.

2. Form: they have the degrees of comparison.

3. Stem-building elements: - ly, -ways, -wards, ...

4. Combinability: bilateral combinability with verbs, adjectives, adverbs, less regularly with adlinks: e.g. He was hard asleep.

5. Function: Adverbial modifiers.

According to the meaning adverbs fall under three subclasses:

1. qualitative

2. quantitative

3. circumstantial

Qualitative adverbs usually modify verbs.

Adverbs like: badly, quickly, slowly, steadily, comparatively may be referred to this type of adverbs.

They denote the quality of actions: Ex: Clay collapsed on the sand beside Cathie, a wet arm playfully snatching her towel away. I want to go home, she said determinedly.

The Qualitative adverbs are derived from the adjectives by the help of productive adverb forming suffix ly.

Like adjectives the qualitative adverbs have distinctions of degree. These adverbs can both precede andfollow the verbs.

Quantitative adverbs show the degree, measure, quantity of an action and state. To this subclass adverbs

like very, rather, too, nearly, greatly, fully, hardly, quite, utterly may be referred. Ex. She had told herself before that it would be foolish to fall in love with Rob. And she had finally done it.

Her gaze trailed around the room again, stopping at the partially opened double doors that

led into the parlour.

Some part of her was walking with him because of that strange, intimate look they had exchanged -a look

that Cathie would rather forget, but warmth was too fresh. J. Daiby.

If the combinability of the qualitative adverbs is bound with verbs only the combinability

of the quantitative adverbs are more extensive: they can modify verbs, the words of category of

state, adjectives, adverbs, numerals and nouns.

Circumstantial adverbs serve to denote in most cases local and temporal circumstances attending an action.

Accordingly they are divided into two groups:

a) adverbs of time and frequency /today, tomorrow, often, again, twice .../.

b) adverbs of place and direction: upstairs, behind, in front of, ... Ex. They stood outside

the door, giving me directions. Now and then they deliberately refused to jump up and find himself

something to do when the unpleasant sensations clutched at him.

c) She waited in front of the window and when he came down he thrust a small dark blue box into her

hands. L.Wright

Thus, circumstancial adverbs denote the time and place the action took place. Therefore

unlike the previous subclasses the circumstantial adverbs can occupy any position in the sentence.

Some circumstantial adverbs can have the degrees of comparison: often, late, near and so on.

Special attention should be given to the fact that some circumstancial adverbs may be

preceded by prepositions: from now on, up to now, from there and so on.

The So-Called Phrasal Verbs

One of the fundamental problems within the adverbs is the problem connected with such

groups of verbs as: to give in, to get down, to dream about and so on. In most cases the meaning of

such groups as above does not depend on the meaning of their components. The thing here is: are the second elements prepositions, adverbs or some other parts of speech? This problem has

become acute in Modern English.

The prevailing view here is that they are adverbs. But there are other views like Palmer's -"prepositions

like adverbs"; Amosova's "postpositives" (1), Ilyish's "half-word, half-morphemes" (15) and so on. None of these

suggestions can be accepted. They are not adverbs because other adverbs do not fulfill such functions, i.e. they do

not change the meaning of the preceding word; they are not postpositives, because postpositives in other languages

do not serve to build new words, and at last they are not grammatical morphemes and consequently the whole group

can not be a word since in English no discontinuous word is found as, for instance, bring them up. The word them

breaks the unity. The problem remains unsolved. For the time being, the most acceptable theory is the theory

expressed by B.A. Ilyish in his latest grammar. He refers them very cautiously, with doubts, to phraseology and thus

it should be the subject-matter of the lexicology.

Some foreign Grammarians (28), (37) give different treatment to phrasal verbs. According

to their opinion phrasal verb is an umbrella term for different kinds of multi -word verbs

(including phrasal -prepositional and prepositional verbs). Such verbs are of typical and frequent

occurrence in all types of English, but most especially in every day spoken English.

Phrasal verbs are often of particular difficulty experienced by learners of English. There are

several reasons for this. One reason is that in many cases, even though students may be familiar

with both the verb in phrasal verb and with the particle, they may not understand the meaning of

the combination, since it can differ greatly from the meanings of the two words used independently.

The fact that phrasal verbs often have a number of different meanings adds to this

complexity additional difficulty.

There are some particular grammatical problems associated with phrasal verbs. For

example, there are restrictions on the positions in which an adverb can be placed in relation to the

object of a verb. Some particles, such as about, over, round and through can be used as both

adverbs and prepositions in particular phrasal verbs combinations, although in other combinations

they are used either as adverb or preposition. Some phrasal verbs are not normally used with

pronouns as objects, others are normally used with pronouns as objects.

There are other difficulties such as the fact that there are frequently strong collocation

associations between phrasal verbs and other words. Thus, in some cases a particular word or small

set of words is the only one normally found as the subject or object of a particular verb.

According to our classification all phrasal verbs fall under 3 main types (and 6 subtypes-

from the viewpoint of verb transitivity):

1. free nonidiomatic constructions, where the individual meaning of the components are preserved as in

look over (=inspect), set up (=organize). The individuality of the components appears in possible contrastive

substitutions: bring in (out), take in (out) etc.

2. "Semi-idiomatic" constructions which are variable but in a more limited way. The relation between the

verb and particle is similar to between a stem and an affix in form formation in that the substitution of one verb for

another, or one particle for another, is constrained by limited productivity. In phrasal verbs like find over

("discover"), cut up “cut into pieces” the verb keeps its meaning, whereas the meaning of the particle is less easy to

isolate. In contrast, it is the particle which establishes a family resemblance.

3. "Highly idiomatic" constructions such as bring up, come by, turn up. These are thoroughly idiomatic in

that there is no possibility of contrastive substitution: bring/down, come by /past/through, turn up/ down, etc.

In such combinations there is no possibility of contrastive substution: there are no pairs

such as bring up/down, put off/on, give up/down, give in/out, etc. for this subclass. The adverbial,

lexical values of the particles have been lost, and the entire verb+particle combination has acquired

a new meaning.

It is often said that phrasal verbs tend to be rather colloquial or informal and more appropriate to spoken

English then written, and even that it is better to avoid them and choose single -word equivalents or synonyms

instead. Yet in many cases phrasal verbs and their synonyms have different ranges of use, meaning, or collocation,

so that a single -word synonym cannot be substituted appropriately for a phrasal verb. Single -word synonyms are

often much more formal in style than phrasal verbs, so that they seem out of place in many contexts, and students

using them run the risk of sounding pompous or just unnatural. Besides, these are phrasal verbs, like get away with

and run of, which do not have one word paraphrases. Second, these are nonidiomatic combinations, such as go

across (= cross), go past (=pass), and sail around (=circumnavigate) which do have such paraphrases.

The set of English phrasal verbs is constantly growing and changing. New combination

appear and spread. Yet these new combinations are rarely made on a random basis, but from

patterns which can to some extent be anticipated. Particles often have particular meanings which

they contribute to a variety of combinations, and which are productive; that is these fixed meanings

are used in order to new combinations.