An adverbial can be an adverb:
He spoke angrily.
They live here.
We will be back soon.
or an adverb with an intensifier:
He spoke really angrily.
They live just here.
We will go quite soon.
or a prepositional phrase:
He spoke in an angry voice.
They live in London.
We will go in a few minutes.
or a noun phrase:
It rained this morning.
They went to Cambodia last summer.
or a clause:
They went to the mountains because they like to ski.
She played tennis when she was young.
- Adverbials 1
- Adverbials 2
- Adverbials 3
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Hello LearnEnglish Team,
I'd like to ask you about the place of an adverb of frequency in a sentence. The rule is that the adverb goes before the main verb but after auxiliary ones. "I usually spent my time playing my favourite game, golf." Is it incorrect to use it at the beginning, in the middle or at the end of a sentence? "Usually I spent my time playing my favourite game, golf."
"I surf the net sometimes."
Except the adverbs of frequency what is the case with the other adverbs?
Thank you in advance.
Hello DoraX,
Adverb position in English is very flexible and you can put adverbs of frequency at the start of the sentence. However, when the sentence is quite long we tend not to do it because we don't want too much of a gap between the adverb and the action it describes.
With other adverbs it varies. We use adverbs at the beginning of a sentence to show the speaker's opinion of the situation described, so the meaning can change. For example, an adverb like 'sadly' can describe how an action is done or how we feel about it:
Adverbs like happily, fortunately, tragically, luckily etc are very commonly used to express the speaker's opinion. Other adverbs, such as slowly, quickly, carefully etc can only be used to describe the manner of an action, so it depends on the adverb in question.
Peter
The LearnEnglish Team
Thank you for your answer.
Hello Sir,
You mentioned adverbials are often used to say how, where, when or how often something happens or is done.My question is, is why something happens also adverbials?
For instance:They went to the mountains because they like to ski.
Hi Sajatadib,
Yes, that's right. Adverbials provide extra information about the verb or the sentence. In this example, the "why" (because they like to ski) provides extra information about the sentence "They went to the mountains".
Jonathan
The LearnEnglish Team
Hello Kunthea,
Yes, I'd say you're right about this. We are going to consider how to best revise this page and then will fix it sometime soon.
I'm very sorry for any confusion this may have caused and thank you very much for pointing this out to us!
All the best,
Kirk
The LearnEnglish Team
Hello Yerlan
'clear' is an adjective here -- it tells us more about the grammar explanations. If it was an adverb, it would be 'clearly'.
I'd suggest you check words like these in the dictionary (follow the links in the previous paragraph).
All the best
Kirk
The LearnEnglish Team
Hello Nada Ibrahim,
'Together' can be an adverb or an adjective.
When used as an adverb, you could say that it describes the manner in which an action is done. However, 'adverb of manner' is really a descriptive term which teachers use rather than a real linguistic term. It describes the function of the adverb in a particular example rather than being a category in which the word belongs.
Peter
The LearnEnglish Team
Hello Darshanie Ratnawalli,
'already' is not a sentence adverb here, nor is it commonly used as one. Sentence adverbs typically go at the beginning of the sentence -- you can read more about them here.
All the best,
Kirk
The LearnEnglish Team
Hello philharis,
Not quite. You need to use the third-person form after 'the woman':
The woman who sells fish also sells yams.
Peter
The LearnEnglish Team