Beware of Google: the case of adverb phrases

Q: What is an adverb phrase?

A: A group of two or more words whose most important word (called the Head) is an adverb.

Here are some examples in context:

• They repaired my bike [very quickly].
• He worked [extremely hard] at the weekend.
• She did [really well] in her tests.
• Why are you leaving [so soon]?

The Heads of these adverb phrases are quickly, hard, well and soon.  They are modified by the adverbs very, extremely, really and so. (Remember that adverbs can modify verbs, adjectives, and adverbs, as well as entire clauses/sentences.)

Despite this being really straightforward, it is nonetheless very easy to get confused about adverb phrases if you look up the notion using Google.

Here’s an example of the kind of definition of adverb phrase that I found on the web: ‘An adverb phrase consists of two or more words that act as an adverb.’

One particular website I came across offers lists of ‘adverb phrases’, such as the following:

• adverb phrases describing ‘where’: on the corner, under the table, on the mat, near the sea
• adverb phrases describing ‘when’: after the summer, in the evening, before they get up
• adverb phrases describing ‘how’: with a pen, with pleasure

Are you confused by this? If you are, don’t worry, because the definition of adverb phrase given on these websites is wrong. The problem is the wording ‘two or more words that act as an adverb’. In the examples above the italicised units do not ‘act as an adverb’. What the author of this website is trying to say is that each of them can have the grammatical function of Adverbial when they are used in sentences such as the following:

• I saw her on the corner.
• We will meet again after the summer.
• They check their email on their iPad before they get up.

In fact, none of the italicised units in the lists above are adverb phrases. They are all preposition phrases, except for before they get up which is a subordinate clause introduced by the subordinating conjunction before.

There are countless websites that confuse form and function, leading to poor writing on grammar. Here’s a particularly bad example. Can you make sense of it?

Conclusion: be careful when you search for grammar terms on the internet: what you find there is often completely unreliable. If you want to be sure to get reliable information about grammar, use Englicious.

On the difference between adverb and adverbial, see my blog post Adverb and Adverbial.

See also: Forms and function (1), Form and function (2).

Form and function (2)

We saw in the blog post Form and function (1) that grammatical form and grammatical function are not always clearly kept apart in the National Curriculum.

Recall that ‘form’ refers to the category labels that we use for the building blocks of language, i.e. word classes (e.g. noun, verb, adjective, etc.), phrases (e.g. noun phrase, adjective phrase, etc.) and clauses (e.g. relative clause). By contrast ‘function’ refers to the grammatical functions (e.g. Subject, Object, Adverbial, etc.) that the various building blocks can perform.

In this blog post we’ll look at some further example of sentences analysed at the levels of form and function.

Consider the following sentences:

• They closed the cinema last month.
• The weather improved over the weekend.
• He is an electrician.
• The radio played a track that I love.
• This class will visit a museum next week.
• The paper has published the allegations.
• The president hasn’t appeared on the news since the scandal erupted.

These are analysed as follows using boxes to indicate the form (blue) and function (orange) levels.

This is a simple sentence containing a Subject, Object and Adverbial.  Each of these take the form of a noun phrase. The verb in this example is transitive, which simply means that it takes an Object. Notice that the verb carries the function label of Predicator. This term is not statutory in the National Curriculum, but useful to know.

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In this case we again have a Subject in the form of a noun phrase. The verb on this occasion is intransitive, i.e. it does not take an Object. It is followed by a preposition phrase that functions as Adverbial.

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In this sentence the Subject takes the form of  a pronoun. The verb is a special kind of verb called a linking verb (also called copula). The noun phrase that follows it functions as Subject Complement. The latter gives information about the Subject. (Incidentally, if you are wondering why he is not a noun phrase, remember that in the National Curriculum a word on its own does not form a phrase. In some models of grammar he would be both a pronoun and a noun phrase.)

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Here again we have a sentence that contains a transitive verb (play). Both the Subject and Object are in the form of a noun phrase. In this case the noun phrase that functions as Object has a relative clause inside it. Relative clauses give additional information about the noun they go with, in this case track.

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In this example the Subject and Object are again in the form of a noun phrase. We also have an Adverbial in the form of a noun phrase. This sentence shows very clearly why we should keep the levels of form and function apart: a noun phrase can perform different kinds of functions. What about the verb? Well, in this case we have two of them: visit is the main verb, preceded by the modal auxiliary verb will. The latter indicates that ‘visiting a museum’ is an event foreseen in the future.

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In this  example, apart from a Subject and Object in the shape of a noun phrase, we again have two verbs, namely the auxiliary verb have and the past participle form of the main verb publish. Together these two verbs form the perfect form of the verb have.

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In this last example the verb is intransitive. It is followed by two units functioning as Adverbial: one is a preposition phrase; the other is a subordinate clause introduced by the subordinating conjunction since. Within the subordinate clause the scandal functions as Subject. Because erupt is an intransitive verb, there is no Object in this clause.