4.8 Adverbs and adverbials
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Comparative adjectives often have the meaning ‘fairly’, ‘quite’: eine ältere Frau eine größere Stadt Ich habe längere Zeit dort gewohnt.
an elderly woman, a fairly old woman a fair-sized town, quite a large town I lived there for a while/for a number of years.
4.8 Adverbs and adverbials Many sentences contain elements which give added detail about the action or event, telling us when, where, why or how something happened or was done. Unlike complements, they are not required grammatically. They simply provide extra information and, as long as they make sense in their context, the same words or phrases could in principle be added to any sentence with any verb: Der Schauspieler spricht deutlich. Das war finanziell eine Katastrophe. Er kaufte trotzdem eine Karte. Ich traf sie um zwei Uhr. Ich wartete vor dem Kino auf ihn.
The actor speaks clearly. Financially that was a catastrophe. He bought a ticket all the same. I met her at two o’clock. I waited for him in front of the cinema.
These words and phrases are known as ADVERBIALS, which is a useful term covering both ADVERBS (single words) and longer ADVERBIAL PHRASES (e.g. both heute and am heutigen Tage are adverbials). Adverbials can be distinguished according to their function:
adverbs
use
examples
time
answering the question when
damals, lange, oft, gestern, heute, vor einer Woche, am Freitag
place
answering the question where
hier, dort, oben, draußen, überall, im Garten, neben der Kirche
direction
answering the question where to/ from
dorthin, dorther, hinein, herauf, woandershin, irgendwohin
attitude
commenting on what is said, or answering a yes/no question
hoffentlich, leider, wahrscheinlich, natürlich, ohne Zweifel
reason
answering the question why
dadurch, daher, deshalb, folglich, trotzdem, aus diesem Grund
manner
answering the question how
irgendwie, anders, telefonisch, durch einen Freund, mit einer Axt
degree
answering the question how much/ small … (often with adjectives)
sehr, außerordentlich, relativ, etwas, ziemlich, in höchstem Maße
interrogative
wh-words introducing questions
wann?, wie lange?, bis wann?, weshalb?, wieso?, von wo?