Routledge Dictionary of Language and Linguistics
Collective term for several syntactic functions with various semantic realizations: an adverbial characterizes a verbal action, process, or state of affairs with respect to time, place, kind, manner, etc. These semantic functions correspond to the classification in school grammar of temporal, spatial, modal, causal, conditional, and consecutive adverbs. In English, there are three major classifications: (a) valence-dependent adverbials which certain verbs require, e.g. to inhabit+spatial adverbial, to feel+modal adverbial, to go+directional adverbial; (b) valence-independent adverbials, such as modal adverbials that can occur with verbs of motion (Louise runs/drives/swims pretty fast); (c) valence-independent adverbials which do not impose any selectional restrictions (Philip is working/relaxing/singing/ meditating in the backyard). Adverbials from groups (a) and (b) are complements, while those in group (c) are free adjuncts. All these adverbials are dominated by the VP, while sentence adverbials (Hopefully/Most likely/ Luckily he will come today) have the sentence as their scope.
Various grammatical categories (parts of speech) can serve as adverbials: adverbs (today, there), adjectives (beautiful, new), pronominal adverbs (therein, hereafter), prepositional phrases (on the table), noun phrases (one morning), as well as adverbial clauses (He followed her wherever she went).
References
Cresswell, M.J. 1985. Adverbial modification. Dordrecht.
Rappaport, G.C. 1984.
Grammatical function and syntactic structure. Columbus, OH.
Thompson, S.A. and R.E.Longacre. 1985. Adverbial clauses. In T.Shopen (ed.), Language typology and syntactic description. Cambridge. Vol. 2, 171–234.
Bibliographies
Sabourin, C. 1977. Adverbs and comparatives: an analytical bibliography. Amsterdam.
Siegrist, L. 1976. Bibliographie zu Studien über das deutsche und englische Adverbial. Tübingen.
grammatical category, parts of speech, sentence adverbial, syntactic function
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