Delahunty and Garvey
analytic test 11a. A word may be an adverb if it can be made comparative
and/or superlative by the addition of the suffixes {-er} and {-est}. (Applies to short
words.)
analytic test 11b. A word may be an adverb if it can be made compara-
tive and/or superlative by being modified by more and most. (Applies to longer
words.)
analytic test 11c. A word may be an adverb if it can be modified by intensi-
fiers such as very, quite, or rather.
Test 11a, in fact, rarely applies, since the language contains relatively few
one-syllable adverbs. Hard and fast are examples. One such form, well, has
irregular comparative and superlative forms, better and best. Colloquially,
words such as quick, soft, slow are inflected for the comparative:
(10) She threw it quicker/softer/slower than anyone expected.Such usages, though, are usually regarded as prescriptively incorrect, the forms
more quickly, etc., being preferred. In general, Test 11b serves as the norm of
prescriptively acceptable comparison of adverbs:
(11) a. She threw it more quickly/softly/slowly/cautiously than anyone
expected.
b. That is most often the case.
Exercise
Apply Tests 11a, b, and c to the following words to show that they may
all be adverbs: far, long, often, soon.
Derivational tests also apply to adverbs, though there are only a few adver-
bial suffixes:
analytic test 12. A word may be an adverb if it actually ends in an adver-
bial derivational suffix.
Some typical adverbial suffixes are listed in Table 8.