A Student's Introduction to English Grammar

Complements

Exercises 125

A few adverbs fonned with the ·ly suffix license complements:

[40] i Purchase of State vehicles is handled similarly to all State purchases.

ii Happilyfor the boys, the class was cancelled.

In one type, the adverb licenses the same kind of complement as the adjective

from which it is formed. Compare [i], for example, with Purchase of State

vehicles is similar to all State purchases. Other adverbs of this kind (with the

preposition they go with shown in parentheses) include separately (from),

independently (of), and equally (with).

A very few adverbs, such as happily in [ii], take complements that are not

licensed by a corresponding adjective with a matching sense: compare *The

cancellation of the class was happy fo r the boys.

Modifiers

Modifiers are mostly AdvPs (as in [41i]), but again detenninatives ([ii]), PPs ([iii])
and certain NPs ([iv]) are also found:

[41] She sang � well. I did it rather hurriedly. He spoke remarkablv �.

ii I didn 't do it that well. They arrived much sooner than we had expected.

iii They behaved badly in the extreme. He didn 't answer at all convincingly.

iv We arrived three hours late. It had all happened a bit suddenly.

Exercises

I. For each of the following adjectives, decide

whether it can be used in attributive func­

tion, whether it can be used in predicative

function, and whether it can be used in

postpositive function. Give your evidence

in detail.

i alone

ii available

vi latter

vii marine

iii ersatz viii previous

iv galore ix prime

v immune x sleepy

2. Classify the underlined words below as
   adjectives or nouns, justifying your answer
   by reference to the criteria given in Chs. 5
   and 6.
   i She is secretary of the Film Society.
   ii I've always admired the Irish.
   iii That's not a government responsibility.
   iv I want the original. not a copy.

v What they say is nonsense.

vi That sounds stupid.

vii It verges on the obscene.

viii She 's quite a comic.

ix Do it the French way.

x He's learning French.

3. Among younger generation speakers, espe­
   cially in AmE, we find not only That was a
   lot of fun, How much fun will we have?, and
   I thought it was fun, but also some con­
   structions that older-generation speakers do
   not use, like these:
   % It was so fun.
   %1 can think of a lot of things funner than that.
   %It's thefunnest thing I've ever done.
   What is the change that has occurred to sep­
   arate the two age groups' dialects?


4. Which of the underlined words below are
   adjectives, which are verbs, and which are