Adverbial


In grammar, an adverbial is a word or a group of words that modifies or more closely defines the sentence or the verb. Look at the examples below:

The form of adverbials

In English, adverbials most commonly take the form of adverbs, adverb phrases, temporal noun phrases or prepositional phrases. Many types of adverbials are often expressed by clauses.
An adverbial is a construction which modifies or describes verbs. When an adverbial modifies a verb, it changes the meaning of that verb. Word groups, which are also considered to be adverbials, can also modify verbs: for example, a prepositional phrase, a noun phrase, a finite clause or a non-finite clause. Prepositional phrase in a sentence may be adverbial; that is, it modifies a verb.

Types of adverbials that form sentence elements

Adverbials are typically divided into four classes:
Adverbial complements are adverbials that render a sentence ungrammatical and meaningless if removed.
Adjuncts: These are part of the core meaning of the sentence, but if omitted still leave a meaningful sentence.
Conjuncts: These link two sentences together.
Disjuncts: These make comments on the meaning of the rest of the sentence.

Distinguishing an adverbial from an adjunct

All verb- or sentence-modifying adjuncts are adverbials, but some adverbials are not adjuncts.

Directional and locative particles

Prepositions may be used adverbially to indicate direction or location.
In some models of grammar negators such as "not" and "never" are considered adverbs and their function that of negating adverbial.

Expletives

Often ignored, expletives may take up many adverbial syntactic functions. Pragmatically and semantically, they often serve as intensifiers, boosting the content of the clause they appear in.