Mr S (a pseudonym), preparing some students for the WASSCE and NECO examinations, once advised the students that they should avoid stating the type of adverbial phrase/clause that is given to any adverbial expression. For example, if the given expression is an adverbial phrase of time, Mr S would want his students to write the answer as “adverbial phrase,” leaving out the “of time” part of it. He argued that if the students, by mistake or in error, wrote “adverbial phrase of place” instead of “adverbial phrase of time,” they would lose the marks allocated to the question. On the other hand, if they stopped at “adverbial phrase,” they would receive the full mark assigned to the question. Against the backdrop, Linguists’ Form considers it a worthwhile exercise to discuss the relationship between adverbs and adverbial phrases in this episode.
Adverbs versus Adverbial Phrases
Traditionally, an adverb is described as a word that modifies a verb, an adjective or another adverb, as in:
1. Audu eats “hurriedly” (It modifies the verb “eats”).
2. The task was “extremely” difficult (It modifies the adjective “difficult”).
3. The lady composed the song “quite” interestingly (It modifies the adverb “interestingly”).
While modifying verbs, adjectives or another adverbs, adverbs answer questions about how (or how much), when, where or why. Depending on the questions they answer, adverbs can be of manner (fast, quickly), degree (quite, very), time (yesterday, now), place (here, there), frequency (regularly, frequently), etc. It should be noted that each of the examples given for the adverbs is a word. That is what differentiates an adverb from an adverbial phrase. Thus, an adverbial phrase is a group of words that is used as part of a sentence and does not have a subject or a (finite) verb, but performs the function of an adverb. In essence, adverbial phrases answer the same questions that adverbs answer – how (manner), how much/often (degree/frequency), where (place), when (time) and why (reason).
Some examples of adverbial phrases are:
4. The host treated the guests “in a friendly manner.”
5. My uncle will visit me “as regularly as possible.”
6. She trusted her husband “a lot.”
7. We left the office “at 12:00 O’clock in the afternoon.”
8. The principal kept the record “somewhere in the lodge.”
9. Titi and Tunde were beaten “for their bad behaviour.”
It is possible to have more than one type of adverb/adverbial phrase (especially time, place and manner) joined together as a single adverbial phrase. When this occurs, the adverbs/adverbials will be arranged in the order of manner+place+time (MPT), as in:
10. The corps members arrived “by air” (manner) “in Kano” (place) “three weeks ago” (time).
If we go by Mr S’s advice, the grammatical names and functions of the adverbials given above will be written as:
11. The host treated the guests “in a friendly manner” (Grammatical Name: Adverbial Phrase; Function: It modifies the verb “treated”).
12. My uncle will visit me “as regularly as possible” (Grammatical Name: Adverbial Phrase; Function: It modifies the verb phrase “will visit”).
13. She trusted her husband “a lot” (Grammatical Name: Adverbial Phrase; Function: It modifies the verb “trusted”).
14. We left the office “at 12:00 O’clock in the afternoon” (Grammatical Name: Adverbial Phrase; Function: It modifies the verb “left”).
15. The principal kept the record “somewhere in the lodge” (Grammatical Name: Adverbial Phrase; Function: It modifies the verb “kept”).
16. Titi and Tunde were beaten “for their bad behaviour” (Grammatical Name: Adverbial Phrase; Function: It modifies the verb phrase “were beaten”).
Lateef Iyanda Kugbayi, PhD
Senior Lecturer
Department of English Language
Zamfara State University
Talata Mafara
lateefkugbayi19@gmail.com/+2347032985052