XLII

ADVERBS

Words of more or less obscure descent, belonging to no one of the regularly defined classes of nouns or verbs, subject to no laws or rules, and yet not only incorporated into the idiom but always of undeniable importance,-this exceptional and generally ill-treated class of words we call after the fashion of ancient grammarians, adverbs. The old Latin writers, whenever a word was found to be established in use which differed from its ordinary manner of signifying, thrust it aside into the class of adverbs.-M. SCHELE DE VERE.

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The common sink and repository of all heterogeneous and unknown corruptions.-HORNE Tooke.

When a man says "I didn't never say nothing to nobody," this is a sound Old English idiom, traces of which are found after 1600.-KINGTON OLIPHANT.

"Adverbs shade off into prepositions and conjunctions, and the same word is often used as two of these parts of speech or even as all the three."

"No other interchange of classification is more frequent than that of adverb and preposition, and vice versa, and in these cases at least the change is generally due to ellipsis."

Judging from the names of the two parts of speech one might suppose that the adverb was strictly a verb modifier and that the adjective had a general limiting power for other parts of speech. But on the contrary it is the adjective which is confined to the one relation

of noun modifier, while all other limiting words are indiscriminately classed together as adverbs.

Many of the adverbs were originally of some other part of speech; some are abbreviations or corrupt forms of other words. Many of the prepositions have also an adverbial use. The one essential characteristic of an adverb is that it is a limiting or subordinate word that is joined to some other part of speech than a

noun.

An adverb may limit a verb, an adjective or another adverb. Occasionally also it limits a preposition or a connective. It frequently gives intensifying or diminishing force to an entire statement, as, "Truly God is good." In such cases it is called a modal adverb. Even the independent words of negation or affirmation, yes and no, are sometimes loosely classed with the modal adverbs. They are equivalent to abridged sentences, however, and are sometimes classed with the interjections.

Adverbs are loosely subdivided according to meaning, into those denoting place, time, cause, manner, quantity, etc. In reference to grammatical use we speak of conjunctive, relative and interrogative as well as modal adverbs.

Many adverbs are used in pairs with correlative signification, as, to and fro, now and then, here and there, hither and thither, up and down, right and left. An adverb is often repeated with correlative force, as, partly, partly; now, now. English is also rich in adverbial phrases, idiomatic and sometimes hard to

explain, as "at once," "at all," "in vain," "of old," one by one.'

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The line of division between adjective and adverb is not very clearly marked. The same word often allows the two uses. Some adverbs, like adjectives, admit of comparison, and the degrees of comparison are formed in the same way as for adjectives.

Thus

Many of our Anglo-Saxon adjectives of one syllable had originally an adverbial form ending in e. Chaucer uses the word hote as the adverbial form of the adjective hot. This final e shared the fate of many other final e's and was gradually dropped. With the dropping of the termination such adverbs became identical in form with the adjectives.

An ly added to an adjective is a modern adverbial termination. Adverbs thus formed are not used adjectively; though the corresponding adjective form is frequently used in an adverbial relation, especially by the poets, who find the adjective more poetic than the strictly adverbial form. This usage is not an innovation but has its root in the older English. Such colloquial expressions as "Walk slow" are common among people who are not "bookish," even when the adverb in ly is the modern literary form.

One of the time-honored battle grounds of grammarians is the question whether certain predicate terms are modifiers of the subject or the verb. In most of these cases the real truth is that both noun and verb are in a degree modified. In "He walks erect," the predicate term has both an adjective and an adverbial relationship.

It is a peculiarity of the English idiom that the use of not in a sentence requires the auxiliary do, as “He does not like it." The poetic form allows the not with the common verb form, but the not is placed after the verb, and usually at the end of the sentence, as, "She likes me not." There are exceptions in literature, however, to this position of the not, as,

She not denies it.-SHAKSPEARE.

If the adverb not be placed in a sentence containing another negative it neutralizes it, as,

He does not work for nothing.

Formerly two negatives were used to make a stronger negative but this was given up under the influence of Latin, in which two negatives make an affirmative.

In old English nay was used to answer a question affirmative in its form, and no a negative one, as,

Is he going? Nay.

Is not he going? No.

But this distinction fell away, and yea and nay are now used in poetic style only.

In a bright paragraph in a literary journal a modern writer discusses "nervous adverbs," that is those that are "nervous" either in position or in literary form. As illustrations of the two cases he quotes, “Few people learn anything that is worth learning, easily," and also the little girl who "liked eggs boiled softly."

Only and certain of the modal adverbs show an especial tendency to lose their right position in the

sentence. The usual place for only is immediately before the word which it modifies. Yet there are instances in which other considerations may alter this position. In the poem "Identity" no less careful a writer than Thomas Bailey Aldrich has included the line, "I only died last night.' To have placed only after died would of course have spoiled the meter; but it would be interesting to know just how long Mr. Aldrich struggled with that line before deciding to let it go in this shape.

The propriety of placing an adverb between an infinitive and its sign has often been questioned, but the practice seems to be increasing. (See Chapter 57, on "The Split Infinitive.")

Some critics have also objected to the placing of an adverb between the parts of a compound tense, preferring "probably will go," "has searched carefully," etc., to "will probably go" and "has carefully searched." It is frequently better that the adverb should precede or follow the entire phrase, but there are many instances in which the middle of the verb phrase seems to be the required place for the adverb.

It is a good principle in writing that adverbs should be somewhat sparingly used. This is especially true of the intensive adverbs. The effect of very is quite as often weakening, as strengthening, to the force of a sentence. Vastly seems to have been abused in the eighteenth century somewhat as awfully was during the latter part of the nineteenth.

Yet a writer's skill is sometimes emphatically shown