Учебное пособие: English Theoretical Grammar

The infinitive is the most abstract verb-form which simply indicates action (in the Indefinite Aspect). That is why it is referred to first in verb articles of dictionaries. Its categories are those of tense-aspect and voice. It can be used as a subject, a predicative, an object, an attribute, and an adverbial modifier.

Theme 5. THE NOTIONAL PARTS OF SPEECH (continued).

Point 6. The adverb. The grammatical meaning of the adverb. The semantic classification of adverbs. The degrees of comparison of adverbs. Syntagmatics of adverbs.

(a) The adverb is a part of speech which expresses some circumstances that attend an action or state.

(b) The grammatical meaning of the adverb is pointing out some characteristic features of an action or a quality.

(c) According to their meanings adverbs fall under several groups:

1. adverbs of time (today, soon, etc.);

2. adverbs of repetition or frequency (often, seldom, over, etc.);

3. adverbs of place and direction (inside, backward, etc.);

4. adverbs of cause and consequence (therefore, accordingly, etc.);

5. adverbs of manner (kindly, hard, etc.);

6. adverbs of degree, measure and quantity (very, almost, once, etc.).

Three groups of adverbs stand aside: interrogative (where, when, why, how), relative and conjunctive adverbs, the former being used in special questions, and the latter two to introduce subordinate clauses.

Some adverbs are homonymous with prepositions, conjunctions (before, after, since) and words of the category of state.

(d) Some adverbs have degrees of comparison. This grammatical category finds its morphological expression only in a limited group of adverbs, namely, the suppletive forms of ‘well’, ‘badly’, ‘much’, ‘little’, and the degrees of comparison of the adverbs ‘fast’, ‘near’, ‘hard’. In other cases the forms are analytical (wisely - more wisely - most wisely). The adverb ‘far’ has a peculiar form.

(e) The syntagmatics of the adverb is that of an adverbial modifier (said softly, nice in a way), and sometimes of an attribute (the then president).


Point 7. The problems of setting off modal words as parts of speech.

The modal words express the attitude of the speaker to the reality, possibility or probability of the action he speaks about.

Formerly, they used to be referred to as adverbs, and it was in Russian linguistics that they were identified as a part of speech. However, H.Sweet distinguished the adverbs relating to the whole sentence and expressing the speaker’s attitude.

Modal words stand aside in the sentence, they are not its members. Sometimes they are used as sentence-words.

The structural field of the modal words consists of the modal words proper used only parenthetically or as sentence-wor

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