Use of Manner Adverbs to Achieve Functional Variety of Sentence

柳路娜

Introduction

In general， a manner adverb is an adverb that emphasizes the situation or process of how a thing happens. Li Quan indicates， “a manner adverb can only modify a verb or a verb phrase to display the status at that time.” Zhang Yisheng points out， “Almost all of the manner adverbs are composite compound with two syllables， reflecting certain behaviors involved in human bodies， facial features and thinking activities.” This article is committed to discussing how to use manner adverbs to achieve functional variety of sentence. An adverb of manner is often used to express one’s feelings of emphasizing， informing， reminding， describing， suspending， explaining and so on. It can be placed at the beginning， in the middle and at the end of a sentence to give more vivid details and get readers’ attention. A good knowledge of the use of the manner adverbs helps writers to improve and vary their sentence style.

Beginnings with Manner Adverbs

Adverbials at the beginning of the sentence include the following three cases： at the beginning of the statements;at the beginning of the general questions;after the conjunctions.

Suddenly there was a crash and the door opened.This sentence putting“suddenly”in the beginning intends to attract the audiences’ attention to what the writer is trying to say. What’s more， such kind of expression emphasizes the writer’s surprised emotion and stands out the sudden and rather rapid process which can help us learn a lot about the compete event .But due to the object as the subject， human feelings are quite objective. Furthermore， “suddenly” here can not modify the existential sentence “there was a crash” and is far from the sentence “the door opened”， so it does not modify the verb “open” but the whole event.

Seriously， do you believe in Ghost？ Seriously can be thought to modify the verb or the whole thing in the simple sentence. This case is in the form of a question whose emotional attitude and affect attitude is clear. And these two attitudes sink into one sense that you should show your beliefs or lay stress on what you are believing.

Suddenly he started the engine.This example starts with the manner adverb “suddenly”， which can draw one’s attention to this sentence immediately. “He” as the subject， human feelings of liking or disgusting will be more obvious. Besides， we will be more interested on the behavior itself because of the single subject in the simple sentence. Then， we can get two ideas of modification in this sentence. One is that “suddenly” modifies the verb “started”; the other is that the complete thing is modified by “suddenly”.

Manner Adverbs between Sentences

I remember to have plainly refused his offer.Adverbials between sentences can be placed in three positions：In front of the middle sentence;at the middle sentence;at the back of the middle sentence.Another particular one is located between two auxiliary verbs. And this is mainly because the tense and aspect of the predicate verb requires several auxiliary verbs to constitute.

Endings with Manner Adverbs

She settled down and we got along pleasantly.From the surface structure， the adverb at the end of sentence does have no difference in the syntactic function. But in the deep structure， is obviously different in the rules of verb phrases. Some modifies the verb phrases， while some modifies the whole sentence. So what the manner adverb modify depends on what the specific context is.

Conclusion

This paper presented the syntactic and semantic function of manner adverbs used in the sentence. At the beginning of a sentence， the adverb of manner usually has the syntactic function of modifying the whole sentence ， emphasizing this event and expressing one’s emotion ， and stresses the semantic function of pointing to the front and conveying something subjective. In the middle of a sentence， the manner adverb lays stress on the syntactic function of modifying the verbs or the verb phrases and possesses the semantic function of describing or highlighting the details of this event and falling on both the front and the latter. At the end of a sentence， the manner adverb holds the syntactic function of modifying the predicate or the whole sentence， and maintain the semantic function of narrating the event objectively and pointing to the previous. This paper analyzes the adverbs of manner in the aspects of the two above-mentioned functions in the sentence roughly. But there are still more needed to be discussed and further study should be encouraged.

參考文獻

1.These pairs of the following words：late/ lately，hard/ hardly，most/ mostly，near/ nearly，have totally different meaning. eg：She was studying hard at the university./My legs were so weak I could hardly stand.

2. 著名學者周海中教授指出，當slow作副詞時，它與其派生詞slowly在用法上無甚區別。例如：The cat came slow（ly） towards us.但有幾點值得注意，尤其是它們的習慣用法，可詳見《Slow與Slowly》一文。[1]

河北平山中學