English Grammar Drills

12
Adverbs
The term adverb is used both narrowly to refer to single-word adverbs and broadly to refer to
any grammatical unit (word, phrase, or clause) that functions as an adverb. In this book, unless
specified otherwise, we will use the term adverb broadly to include all types of adverbs. If we
need to be more specific, we will use the terms single-word adverb, adverb phrase, or adverb clause.
Adverbs are conventionally defined as grammatical elements (words, phrases, or clauses) that
“modify verbs, adjectives, and other adverbs.” Since 99 percent of the time, adverbs are used to
modify verbs, from this point we will focus exclusively on adverbs that modify verbs.
This chapter is divided into two parts. In the first part, we will discuss how adverbs are
formed. In the second part, we will discuss how adverbs are used.
How adverbs are formed
In this section we will examine how adverbs are formed at the word level, at the phrase level, and
at the clause level.
Word-level adverbs
Adverbs fall into two distinct groups: (1) a small number of mostly single-syllable words that are
used with very high frequency, and (2) the great majority of adverbs that are derived from adjectives,
for example deep/deeply; true/truly, sad/sadly.
Here are the twenty-five most commonly used adverbs (note that not one of the very high
frequency adverbs is derived from an adjective by adding -ly):
1. only
2. then
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