Language Arts Canadian Lead Primary School
Adverbs: For Other Words
Adverbs: don’t be fooled by the fact that the base -verb- is in the word (verb in Latin just means ‘word’). Adverbs are NOT words which modify verbs. At least, that’s not all they are.
And they’re not just words that end in -ly, although this suffix is a pretty clear indicator that you could have an adverb there.
Adverbs are modifiers for sure, but they do so much more than describe verbs. They also modify other adverbs, adjectives and, of course, verbs.
Let’s take a worked example, where the adverb is underlined:
The cat slowly crept around the corner.
Easy, right? Slowly has got the classic -ly suffix and it’s clearly modifying the verb crept.
Let’s add an adverb:
The cat very slowly crept around the corner.
This time, we modified slowly. How would you like your dinner served in a restaurant? Slowly or very slowly?
Let’s add another one:
The cat very slowly crept around the corner today.
We just modified that whole thing by placing today at the end of the sentence. It modified crept, of course, but isn’t it interesting that with adverbs, you can place them in many different parts of the sentence?
