Adverb
An adverb is a part of speech that normally serves
to modify verbs, adjectives, other adverbs, clauses, and sentences. Adverbs answer such questions as how?, when?, where?, in what way?, or how often?
In English, adverbs often have the suffix -ly, but so do many adjectives. The -ly is a common, but not reliable marker of an adverb.
Some others use the suffix -wise. It competed with a related form -ways and won out against it. In a few words, like sideways, -ways survives; words like crosswise show the transition .
Some other adverbs are identical in form to their adjectives. Otherwise, other adverbs are derived from adjectives.
The comparative and superlative forms of adverbs that are identical to their adjectives are generated by adding -er and -est. The comparative and superlative forms of most other adverbs (except in poetic forms like wiselier) use more or most. Adverbs also take comparisons with as ... as, less, and least.
The usual form pertaining to adjectives or adverbs is called the positive. Thus the three grades are positive "happy", comparative "happier", and superlative "happiest".
Non-English Adverbs
Other languages may form adverbs in different ways, if they are used at all:
- In German, adverbs have the basic form of their corresponding adjectives and are not inflected (except for comparation).
- Romance languages form adverbs by adding -mente (Spanish, etc) or -ment (French).
- In Esperanto, adverbs are not formed from adjectives but are made by adding -e directly to the word root. Thus, from bon are derived bone, "well", and bona, "good".
- Austronesian languages appear to form comparative adverbs by repeating the root (as in closed class (there is resistance to adding new words to the class), whereas the class of adverbs that modify verbs is not.
Words like very and particularly afford another useful example. We can say Jim is very fast, but not Jim very won the race. These words can modify adjectives but not verbs. On the other hand, there are words like here and there that cannot modify adjectives. We can say The sofa looks good there but not It is a there beautiful sofa. The fact that many adverbs can be used in more than one of these functions can confuse this issue, and it may seem like splitting hairs to say that a single adverb is really two or more words that serve different functions. However, this distinction can be useful, especially considering adverbs like naturally that have different meanings in their different functions.
Not is an interesting case. Grammarians have a difficult time categorizing it, and it probably belongs in its own class.
