Adverbial in the context of "Adverbial clause"

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⭐ Core Definition: Adverbial

In English grammar, an adverbial (abbreviated adv) is a word (an adverb) or a group of words (an adverbial clause or adverbial phrase) that modifies or more closely defines the sentence or the verb. (The word adverbial itself is also used as an adjective, meaning "having the same function as an adverb".) Look at the examples below:

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Adverbial in the context of Mansi languages

The Mansi languages are spoken by the Mansi people in Siberia, Russia along the Ob River and its tributaries, in the Khanty–Mansi Autonomous Okrug, and Sverdlovsk Oblast. Traditionally considered a single language, they constitute a branch of the Ugric languages, within the broader Uralic language family. They are often considered most closely related to neighbouring Khanty and then to Hungarian.

The base dialect of the Mansi literary language is the Sosva dialect, a representative of the northern language. Fixed word order is typical in Mansi. Adverbials and participles play an important role in sentence construction.

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Adverbial in the context of Adverb

An adverb is a word or an expression that generally modifies a verb, an adjective, another adverb, a determiner, a clause, a preposition, or a sentence. Adverbs typically express manner, place, time, frequency, degree, or level of certainty by answering questions such as how, in what way, when, where, to what extent. This is called the adverbial function and may be performed by an individual adverb, by an adverbial phrase, or by an adverbial clause.

Adverbs are traditionally regarded as one of the parts of speech. Modern linguists note that the term adverb has come to be used as a kind of "catch-all" category, used to classify words with various types of syntactic behavior, not necessarily having much in common except that they do not fit into any of the other available categories (noun, adjective, preposition, etc.).

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Adverbial in the context of Conjunct

In linguistics, the term conjunct has three distinct uses:

  • A conjunct is an adverbial that adds information to the sentence that is not considered part of the propositional content (or at least not essential) but which connects the sentence with previous parts of the discourse. Rare as it may be, conjuncts may also connect to the following parts of the discourse.
    • It was raining. Therefore, we didn’t go swimming.
    • It was sunny. However, we stayed inside.
    • You are such a dork. Still, I love you from the bottom of my heart.
  • A conjunct is one of the terms that are conjoined in a conjoining construction. Conjuncts are conjoined by means of a conjunction, which can be coordinating, subordinating or correlative. Conjuncts can be words, phrases, clauses, or full sentences.
    • [Gretchen and her daughter] bought [motor oil, spark plugs, and dynamite].
    • Take two of these and call me in the morning.
  • A verb form, for example the conjunct verb endings of Old Irish or the conjunct mood (sometimes called the subjunctive mood) of Algonquian languages.

This article discusses the first kind of conjunct.

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Adverbial in the context of Adjunct (grammar)

In linguistics, an adjunct is an optional, or structurally dispensable, part of a sentence, clause, or phrase that, if removed or discarded, will not structurally affect the remainder of the sentence. Example: In the sentence John helped Bill in Central Park, the phrase in Central Park is an adjunct.

A more detailed definition of the adjunct emphasizes its attribute as a modifying form, word, or phrase that depends on another form, word, or phrase, being an element of clause structure with adverbial function. An adjunct is not an argument (nor is it a predicative expression), and an argument is not an adjunct. The argument–adjunct distinction is central in most theories of syntax and semantics. The terminology used to denote arguments and adjuncts can vary depending on the theory at hand. Some dependency grammars, for instance, employ the term circonstant (instead of adjunct), following Tesnière (1959).

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Adverbial in the context of Adverbial phrase

In linguistics, an adverbial phrase ("AdvP") is a multi-word expression operating adverbially: its syntactic function is to modify other expressions, including verbs, adjectives, adverbs, adverbials, and sentences. Some grammars use the label adverb phrase to denote an adverbial phrase composed entirely of adverbs versus an adverbial phrase, which might not contain an adverb.

Adverbial phrases can be divided into two types: complementary phrases and modifying phrases. For example, very well is a complementary adverbial phrase that complements "sang" in the sentence "She sang very well". More specifically, the adverbial phrase very well contains two adverbs, very and well: while well qualifies the verb to convey information about the manner of singing. By contrast, almost always is a modifying adverbial phrase that modifies "skip" in the sentence "I almost always skip breakfast."

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