Adverb Meanings

Discussion Activity: Review the sentences (below) from Exercise 10.7 and Exercise 10.8 and figure out what questions you might ask in order to get someone to answer with just the adverb in the sentence.

1. Wilbur walked slowly towards the door.
2. He quietly opened it and looked in the hallway.
3. A bag was sitting there.
4. Wilbur felt somewhat fearful as he picked up the bag.
5. He was very afraid of a bomb.
6. His uncle’s stories about government conspiracies had influenced him greatly.
7. He always feared wire-tappings, tax audits, and other invasions of privacy.
8. Improbably, he opened the bag.
9. Happily, he found nothing dangerous.
10. It was not a bomb; it was the new telephone book.

1. I knew I had to work quickly.
2. I turned my head downward to read the directions.
3. “Turn the cap clockwise,” said the instructions on the bottle.
4. I gripped the cap firmly.
5. I glanced backward and sent a prayer heavenward.
6. I turned the cap clockwise steadily.
7. It came off fairly easily.  I could now mix the two parts of the epoxy together.
8. Difficulty-wise, this was a minor achievement, but confidence-wise, it was major.
9. Now I was a capable handyman.

Activity 10.9: Meanings of Adverbs

Adverbs generally provide the answers to the questions where, when, why, how, to what extent, under what conditions, and how _______.  To test this, read the following passage and then give as short an answer as possible to the questions that follow.

Exercise 4: Read the passage and answer the questions with as short an answer as possible. Click on the Solution button to compare your answer with the recommended answer.

Adverb Meanings

Adverbs generally provide the answers to the questions where, when, why, how, to what extent, under what conditions, and how _______.  If you look at the questions in the reading comprehension exercise above, you’ll notice that each of them contains a question that should prompt an answer that includes an adverb, if not simply an adverb alone.

Instead of answering with a one-word adverb, you may have subconsciously provided fuller information.  In these cases, you likely used a paraphrase for an adverb, producing another type of structure that functions in the same ways adverbs do: as a verb modifier, as an adjective modifier, as an adverb modifier, or as a sentence modifier.  And if we look more closely at the paraphrases, we’ll probably see that they are prepositional phrases.  Since prepositional phrase function as modifiers, we will take them up in the next chapter.

Continue with Prepositions