[…] Macmillan Dictionary blog, Michael Rundell picked on adverbs and Stan Carey praised serendipity. On his own blog, Stan traced the diffusion and variety of folk […]
Michael’s post shows convincingly that words like ‘away’, ‘slowly’, ‘geographically’, ‘apparently’ and ‘utterly’ really haven’t got a great deal in common, in terms of how they relate to other words, phrases, sentences and utterances – and that ‘adverbs’ isn’t actually a very useful category. Time for a terminological clearout, and some new categories that reflect 21st century English more accurately and transparently? Absolutely!
[…] Why pick on adverbs? […]
Great post! I strongly agree that we shouldn’t pick on adverbs!
FYI, there’s a mistake in this sentence: “His research demonstrates that not only are words like this frequent in every kind of text (…)”. It should be “His research demonstrates that not only are words like THESE frequent in every kind of text (…)”
When I used to read aloud to my children I couldn’t help noticing J K Rowling is the queen of the ‘manner’ adverb. Open a HP book at any page of dialogue and you will find people saying things coldly, shortly, briskly, sheepishly, hoarsely, indignantly etc. I think the most frequently occurring trigram in the whole series is ‘…Harry said hotly’.
[…] or subversive adverbs: Adverbs can spice up your verbs and shift their meaning in important ways. (Michael Rundell gives a great description of how Margaret Thatcher used the adverbial phrase “totally and […]
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[…] Macmillan Dictionary blog, Michael Rundell picked on adverbs and Stan Carey praised serendipity. On his own blog, Stan traced the diffusion and variety of folk […]
Michael’s post shows convincingly that words like ‘away’, ‘slowly’, ‘geographically’, ‘apparently’ and ‘utterly’ really haven’t got a great deal in common, in terms of how they relate to other words, phrases, sentences and utterances – and that ‘adverbs’ isn’t actually a very useful category. Time for a terminological clearout, and some new categories that reflect 21st century English more accurately and transparently? Absolutely!
[…] Why pick on adverbs? […]
Great post! I strongly agree that we shouldn’t pick on adverbs!
FYI, there’s a mistake in this sentence: “His research demonstrates that not only are words like this frequent in every kind of text (…)”. It should be “His research demonstrates that not only are words like THESE frequent in every kind of text (…)”
When I used to read aloud to my children I couldn’t help noticing J K Rowling is the queen of the ‘manner’ adverb. Open a HP book at any page of dialogue and you will find people saying things coldly, shortly, briskly, sheepishly, hoarsely, indignantly etc. I think the most frequently occurring trigram in the whole series is ‘…Harry said hotly’.
[…] http://grammar.about.com/od/basicsentencegrammar/a/adverbquotes.htm (Richard Nordquist)http://www.macmillandictionaryblog.com/why-pick-on-adverbs (Michael Rundell)http://chronicle.com/blogs/linguafranca/2013/02/20/being-an-adverb/ (Geoffrey […]
[…] http://www.macmillandictionaryblog.com/why-pick-on-adverbs […]
[…] or subversive adverbs: Adverbs can spice up your verbs and shift their meaning in important ways. (Michael Rundell gives a great description of how Margaret Thatcher used the adverbial phrase “totally and […]