A Student's Introduction to English Grammar

122 Chapter 6 Adjectives and adverbs

One type are AdjPs containing how, as, so, too, this or that as modifier, as in [i].

There are two adjectives that can appear by themselves in this position: such and

the exclamative word what, shown in [ii].

2 Adverbs

The adverb is the fourth and last of the categories of lexemes that we
call open - the categories with huge and readily expandable membership. Noun and
verb are the major open categories. Every canonical clause, even the simplest, must
contain at least one of each (Kim laughed, Clouds fo rmed, They moved). Such ele­
mentary constructions can be expanded by adding adjectives and adverbs as modi­
fiers. Nouns take adjectives as their simplest and most typical modifiers, while verbs
take adverbs.
The main thing that makes the adverb category open is that such a high propor­
tion of adverbs are morphologically derived from adjectives by adding the suffix ·ly.
It is with these related adjective-adverb pairs that we can see most clearly the con­
trast between the modifiers of nouns and the modifiers of verbs:

[3 2 ] MODIFICATION OF NOUN MODIFICATION OF VERB

a. a�family b. They all lived � ever after.

ii a. a �reedy child b. The child devoured it �reedily.

iii a. a passionate lover b. They loved each other passionately.

Here double underlining marks the head word, and single underlining marks the

modifier - an adjective in [a], an adverb in [b].

2.1 Adverbs as modifiers of categories other than the noun

The term 'adverb' is based on the function of these words as modifiers
of verbs. But to a very large extent the words that are used for modifying verbs also
function as modifiers to adjectives; and a good many modify other adverbs as well:

[33] a. a virtual disaster b. *his almost death

ii a. It virtually evaporated. b. He almost died.

[noun]

[verb]

iii a. It was virtually impossible. b. He was almost dead. [adjective]

iv a. He spoke virtually inaudibly. b. He was wounded almost fatally.

The annotations on the right give the category of the (double-underlined) head
word.
In the [a] set, on the left, we have the adjective virtual modifying the noun, with
the corresponding adverb virtually modifying the other three heads.
In the [b] set the adverb almost modifies a verb, adjective or adverb; but since
it isn't derived from any adjective there is no matching noun modifier to com­
plete rib].

[adverb]