Can adverbs modify nouns?

CopperKettle

Dec 22, 2015 19:07

"Anything can modify anything" belongs in the same pantheon as FumbleFingers' Perfect Truism. I christen it Ricky's Arrogance Principle. — StoneyB 6 hours ago

"Almost everybody came in the end." - an adverb modifying an pronoun

Anonymous

@CopperKettle Where's the adjective?

CopperKettle

A pronoun

Sorry, my brain is not shipshape. (0:

Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ.

OK I can remove the fluff from this answer and get to one single word without any harm to the content: "Yes". I think it would really pay if you mention why "*very people" is incorrect (in the quantification sense; the correct version being "many people") while "almost everyone" isn't. But then again, these must be beneath you so I guess just have a fun day. — Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ. 1 min ago

CopperKettle

"As the poet said, I'm sufficiently proud about knowing something to be occasionally modest about my not knowing everything."

I found it: it was Nabokov who said that.

A well-read guy. Nabokov's books are great.

CopperKettle

Dec 22, 2015 19:38

a discussion about adverbs modifying pronouns, dating back to 1998

"From this point of view, 'almost' lacks certain
characteristics that common adjectives share: i.e., we don't find
comparative and superlative *almoster or *almostest. We do find that
'almost' can modify nouns, verbs, and adjectives. To my way of thinking,
it's a better generalization to say that 'almost' is an adverb, and that
certain adverbs can modify very many classes of words, not just verbs."

> LOL: ""The Klingon Dictionary" by Marc Okrand (New York: Pocket Books,
1985) says on page 18: "There are three basic parts of speech in Klingon:
_noun_, _verb_, and _everything_else_." For English, _everything_else_ =
adverb."

Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ.

@CopperKettle Use blockquotes! See how much @Dam loves them?

CopperKettle

@Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ. how does one use them?

Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ.

@CopperKettle Just like the main site, except that you can't nest them.

CopperKettle

> Oh, I see. That's how.

Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ.

@CopperKettle Yay!

CopperKettle

Dec 22, 2015 19:41

Yay indeed!

Damkerng T.

@CopperKettle I wonder when someone will say that almost is a preposition. :-)

Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ.

@DamkerngT. almost is a preposition.

Damkerng T.

:-)

As for the argument that we don't say almoster or almostest, we don't say onlier or onliest either. Does that make it not an adjective in the only person?

(And what is my not up there? in 'make it not an adjective'.)

(My cat seems to be curious about what I'm typing away!)

Anonymous

Not all adjectives are gradable. But for something to be an adjective, it should have at least some adjective-like qualities.

Anonymous

Some adjectives only appear in attributive position. Others only appear in predicative position.

Anonymous

Dec 22, 2015 19:51

Some adjectives aren't gradable.

Anonymous

When adjectives don't have all the properties that most adjectives do, that's when we consider them peripheral members of the category.

2

Anonymous

But they still have to have some of the properties, or there's no use in calling them adjectives.

Anonymous

@CopperKettle I don't think anyone would claim that adverbs only modify verbs.

Anonymous

That would be silly.

Damkerng T.

BTW, I'm a human pillow right now.

Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ.

Dec 22, 2015 20:09

Punches @Dam

Oh that's soft!

Damkerng T.

bouncing...

Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ.

Plays pillow fight, throws @Dam at @Snail

Damkerng T.

Argh! Please don't throw me around!

Anonymous

Dec 22, 2015 20:24

@CopperKettle The basic distinction between adjectives and adverbs is not 'modifier of noun' versus 'modifier of verb'.

Anonymous

Someone learning about English grammar might be confused by the verb part of the word adverb and make a claim like that, but it's not a serious claim.

Anonymous

The basic distinction is 'modifier of noun' versus 'modifier of other'.

Anonymous

@CopperKettle For further reading, and a more detailed analysis: The distribution and category status of adjectives and adverbs (Payne, Huddleston & Pullum 2010)

Anonymous

This is a newer analysis than in CGEL.

Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ.

@snailboat verb part of the word? Am I officially allowed to say that adjectives modify jectives?

Anonymous

Dec 22, 2015 20:28

@Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ. You'd be surprised how much (sometimes only apparent) etymology influences the way we think about words.

Anonymous

Let's talk about prepositions, which are not always pre-positioned in English.

Anonymous

Some folks are unhappy with the idea of calling them prepositions if they're not pre-positioned, right before a noun phrase.

Anonymous

Unfortunately, this leads to a very confusing analysis of English, in which there is a category of things that are often not in that position, but otherwise pattern like prepositions!

Anonymous

A very few prepositions typically follow their complements.

Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ.

@snailboat And calling them what? Flower?

Anonymous

Dec 22, 2015 20:29

And some would prefer to call these postpositions.

Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ.

Ahh

Anonymous

Linguistics has a hypernym for pre- and post-positions, and that term is adposition.

Anonymous

But some things in English pattern like prepositions without taking complements.

Anonymous

They appear neither before nor after their complements because they have none.

Anonymous

> I went home.

Anonymous

Dec 22, 2015 20:31

Traditionally, it'd be called an adverb.

Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ.

J.L.'s answer!

Anonymous

But the adverb category is full of a bunch of unlike things. And one subcategory of adverb is just that – words that pattern like preposition phrases, but without the NP complement. Home is one of them.

Anonymous

And home isn't pre-positioned before anything.

Anonymous

So of course people don't like calling it a preposition.

Anonymous

But around a hundred years ago, the great Otto Jespersen realized that, apart from being intransitive, they're just like prepositions.

Anonymous

Dec 22, 2015 20:33

Now, in English we have transitive verbs and intransitive verbs.

Anonymous

The question is: why don't we call intransitive verbs 'adverbs'?

Anonymous

Well, that'd be silly, right?

Anonymous

They walk and talk like transitive verbs. Just like them, 'cept for the transitivity part.

Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ.

I'm calling myself "adverb" from now on.

Anonymous

But we're doing exactly that with prepositions! We call home an adverb in traditional grammar, but it's not really like the class of adverbs.

Anonymous

Dec 22, 2015 20:35

More to the point, we're making the adverb category even more heterogeneous than it already is by lumping these intransitive prepositions in there.

Anonymous

Calling them adverbs is silly. That's exactly what you'll find in dictionaries, though.

Anonymous

And one reason people are resistant to calling them prepositions is the shape of the word. Pre-position.

Anonymous

Huddleston & Pullum argue that we should call all words in this class prepositions whether they come before or after their complements, or whether they take them at all. We should ignore the etymology the same way we do with adverb, they say.

Anonymous

But although this isn't a particularly new idea, people aren't especially keen on it.

Anonymous

They're even less keen on using the term adposition.

Language Overflow

Participants