- Macarena painted the townred.
Notice that the adjectiveredcompletes the predicate, but it doesn’t immedi-
ately follow the verb. Moreover,paintedis not a linking verb.
Adverbial Modifiers
Adverbial modifiers supply information to verbs, adjectivals, other adverbials,
clauses, and sentences. They are versatile. Adverbials are not sensory; rather
they provide six different types of information:
time, place, manner, degree, cause, concessionLike adjectivals, adverbials consist ofsimple adverbsas well as entire con-
structions that function adverbially. The following examples illustrate
adverbials that provide the six types of information just listed. Note that
adverbials of degree modify adjectivals, or they may modify other adverbials:
Time: They arrivedlate.
Place: We stoppedtherefor a rest.
Manner: Fred opened the boxslowly.
Degree: Macarena feltverytired. She opened the boxquiterapidly.
Cause: We atebecause we were hungry.
Concession:Although she didn’t like broccoli,she ate it.In the last two examples, we see illustrations of longer constructions
(clauses) functioning as adverbials:Because we were hungryandAlthough she
didn’t like broccoliaresubordinate clauses,which we’ll examine shortly (page
86). Another important adverbial construction is the prepositional phrase,
which we’ll examine on pages 89–92.
Head Words
Modification in English is flexible, particularly with adverbials, which can ap-
pear in different places in a sentence. Earlier, we briefly examined an important
principle of modification: No matter where a modifier appears, it is linked to
one word in the sentence more closely than it is to other words. For example, in
The new book made her career,the adjectivenewis linked tobook.InFred
opened the box slowly,the adverbslowlyis linked toopened.The word to
which a modifier is linked is called ahead word.Head words become important
TRADITIONAL GRAMMAR 79