This chapter discusses a set of lexical items usually referred to as adverbs. We will take the view that the term adverb does not denote a set of entities with a particular categorial status, as do the terms verb, noun, adjective, and preposition; rather, it denotes a set of lexical items that perform a particular syntactic function in the clause, more specifically that of an adverbial phrase. Our use of the term adverb should therefore be seen as shorthand for “adverbially used adjective”. For many adverbs, their adjectival status is easy to establish, since they can also be used attributively or predicatively in other contexts, or exhibit typical syntactic or morphological properties such as those listed in (1).

Despite the fact that we do not acknowledge the existence of a lexical category of adverbs, it cannot be denied that there are adverbs, like the degree adverbs zeervery and heelvery mentioned in (1a): for these there is no direct syntactic or morphological evidence that they are adjectival in nature. However, the fact that they cannot be inflected for tense and agreement shows that they are not verbs, and that they cannot be preceded by a determiner or occur in an argument position strongly suggests that they are not nouns either. Therefore, we tentatively conclude that they must be adjectives, which is supported by the fact that they share with certain adjectives the semantic property of being able to modify an adjective.

This chapter is organized as follows. Section 30.1 discusses the adjectival properties of adverbs. Sections 30.2 to 30.4 then discuss the use of adverbs in the clausal domain and in adjectival, adpositional and nominal phrases. These discussions will be relatively brief; more extensive and general discussions of adverbial modification can be found elsewhere: adverbial modification of APs and clauses, for example, is also discussed in Chapter 25.