Order of Adverbials

When using a free adverbial we are faced with the question of just where to place it in the sentence. The fact that we can have more than one adverbial raises a further question: In what order do we place the adverbials in the sentence? Let's look at some examples.

The most noticeable thing here is that adverbials can appear almost anywhere in a sentence. We will look at three distinct categories of adverbials. Adverbs of manner, place, and time (considered together), as in examples (1) and (2). Frequency adverbs, as in examples (3) and (4), and adverbs used disjunctively, as is 'Hopefully' in example (5).

Adverbs of Manner, Place, and Time

Let's look at our first two examples again:

These include the adverbials quietly and excitedly, describing 'manner' (or how something is done), by the fire and in the living room, which tell us where the action was done, and for hours on end, which gives us information about the time of the action - in this case the action's duration.

In general, adverbials describing manner are more strongly related to the verb than adverbials describing place or time, and adverbials of place are in turn more strongly related to the verb than adverbials of time. In the first sentence, the adverb quietly tells us most about the action - how it was actually done - while by the fire is slightly less directly related to the verb, and for hours on end is fairly incidental.

Adverbials of manner

Let's look more closely at adverbials of manner. These are usually single words, often ending in -ly, and as stated above give us information directly related to the verb. We can consider these to be the most 'important' of the three types of adverbial. They are usually closely related to the verb both in meaning and position. They can be placed in internal, final, or initial positions:

A few comments on each of these positions.

Adverbials of manner: Internal position

This is probably the most common position for an adverbial of manner. The adverbial is placed between the subject and the main verb of the sentence, but after any auxiliary verbs there might be in the verb phrase (but see the comments on the verb 'be' below):

As usual things aren't as simple as they first appear to be. Look at these examples:

There is no difference in meaning between the first two examples, but the third and fourth are completely different. The third, as you might expect, tells us that her answer to the question was foolish; the fourth, that it was foolish of her to answer the question. This is a problem of what I will call binding, that is, which phrase the adverbial 'binds' or combines with. The adverbial 'foolishly' in final position binds only with the phrase 'answered the question', but, if placed internally, binds more with the subject than the verb. (See the section on disjunctive adverbs for similar situations.) The result is that you have to think very carefully about where you place the adverb if you want to be sure of the meaning of the sentence. Let's go back to one of the original examples, and a small variation on it:

The difference in order is immediately obvious, but can you see the difference in meaning? In the first sentence the adverbial follows all the auxiliary verbs and binds with the verb only, telling us how she arranged the flowers. In the second the adverbial is placed after the first (and most important - but more on that another time) auxiliary verb, and could be understood to bind just with the verb, as in the first example, or with the subject, telling us something like 'she had been arranging the flowers, which was a careful thing to do.' In this example the difference is unlikely to create any problems, but you should at least be careful of situations like this - in other examples you might not be so lucky!

The concept of binding is important in most cases when you are considering word order, and can be especially so under certain circumstances or with certain words. As an example, consider these sentences, each of which contains two verbs:

Which verb - fail or agree - does the adverb completely bind with? In the first sentence the answer is unambiguous - the adverb binds with failed. The second sentence would be ambiguous if written, although it might be clear if spoken as the intonation could tell us which verb the adverb referred to. The third sentence is unambiguous, completely binding with agree. It's also a good example of where splitting an infinitive (that is, placing an adverb between 'to' and the rest of the infinitive) can clearly express a meaning not otherwise easily conveyed, and therefore a good argument in defence of the use of split infinitives, which some people claim should never be used.

The final example showing the importance of binding in the position of specific words in the sentence. even is probably the best example:

The first example is the basic sentence without emphasis. The adverb even is used to express surprise at something; just what it expresses surprise at depends on its position. In the second example we are surprised at how easy the problem is, and that John, who is presumably not particularly bright, was able to solve it without help. John is more fortunate in the third; here we are surprised that, amongst his other abilities, he was able to solve this difficult problem without help. The fourth is similar to the third, though in this case we are referring only to his problem solving abilities, and not any others he might have. In the fifth John's talents are somewhat less impressive, and we are only surprised at his abiltiy to solve the problem without help. even, of course, is a particularly tricky word to use, but there are other more common words which present similar difficulties. See how many ways you can position also in the sentence:

As usual, the verb 'be' is treated differently from other verbs, the adverbial following the verb:

Internal position is mainly restricted to 'one word' adverbials, typically ending in -ly. Most adverbials of manner are of this form, but some phrases are also used as adverbials of manner - 'with...' phrases being a good example:

Here the phrase has to be placed in final position.

There are two more cases I will consider here. The first is the use of adverbs which give the speakers opinion of how something was done:

badly must be placed in the final position, although it goes before other types of adverbials - the adverbial of time today in this case. Is there a good reason for this? Yes, probably, I would say. The adverbial expresses the speakers opinion of how they did it, whereas adverbials placed internally can either tell us 'the fact' of how they did it - with the implication that they somehow 'intended' to do it that way - or our opinion of the whole sentence, as in the example with foolishly above.

The second case is where the adverb contains information critical to the meaning of the sentence, as in:

Here internal position is not possible. The final position after the verb phrase places the necessary emphasis on the adverb.

Adverbials of manner: final position

The adverbial is placed after the verb and any objects that might be required by the verb used, as described in the first part of this article.

Occasionally the adverbial can also be placed after a subject complement, although it would be unusual for it to follow an object complement:

The second example sounds unnatural because the adverb has been separated from its verb; it seems to bind more with 'an idiot' than with 'called' here. The adverbial would sound much more natural placed internally, although the final position would be more acceptable if more than one adverbial had been used:

Longer expressions, such as 'angrily and loudly', don't sit too happily between the subject and verb, so we would tend to move them to the end of the sentence. In spoken English the final position might also be used, with a variation in emphasis to show more clearly that it refers to the verb. If you do use this order, be careful! Finally, if a one-word adverbial is used in combination with an adverbial phrase, it might be placed alongside the phrase at the end of the sentence. Consider:

The second sentence is questionable because 'angrily' binds with 'called him an idiot with great venom'. It would be difficult to imagine calling someone this without doing it angrily, so the adverb is redundant and therefore sounds unnatural. Note, however, that the following sentence would be acceptable:

The comma causes the final phrase to be interpreted as an additonal comment on how she did it. The sentence is now very similar to the original one above.

See also the section on internal position for some situations where final position is required.

Adverbials of manner: initial position

Some adverbs of manner can be placed initially:

This position gives the sentence a literary sound. Adverbials of manner should be used with care in this position as not all of them can be used like this.

This option seems restricted to those adverbs which truly describe how the action was done (slowly, quietly). Other adverbs, such as those of degree (completely) cannot be placed in this position:

although it is sometimes possible to use other types of adverb in combination with an inversion of the subject and verb. See the article on inversion for more on this.

Adverbials of place

Adverbials of place are about the easiest to use, as they are just about always placed in final position:

The position of some adverbials of place can change to initial position, when used with a subject-verb 'inversion':

Adverbials of time

I am using the expression 'adverbials of time' to refer only those adverbs that describe absolute time. These include such expressions as yesterday and today, as well as on Sunday, in December. They should be distinguished from other relative adverbials, such as already and recently, which follow the conventions for adverbials of manner

Adverbials of time normally provide the most incidental information in the sentence, and so are least strongly bound to the verb. This is reflected in their position at the end of the sentence:

Because they are only loosely connected to the verb, their position is flexible, as long as they are not actually placed within the verb phrase. You will often see them at the beginning of a sentence. This is a normal position if the speaker wants to emphasize the time, or if the sentence already has 'long' objects and adverbials after the verb:

See also the following section on frequency adverbs.

Frequency Adverbs

First let's distinguish between adverbials which describe absolute frequency and those which describe relative frequency:

Expressions which describe absolute frequency should be treated like adverbials of time - see the previous section for more information. Longer expressions, like every now and then, are also treated like this. Here I will describe shorter, 'grammatical', adverbials which describe relative frequency, which are normally just referred to as frequency adverbs.

Some of the more common frequency adverbs, listed in order of frequency, are:

• always
• nearly always
• usually
• often
• quite often
• sometimes
• occasionally
• hardly ever
• never

The list is not meant to be exhaustive; don't worry if your favourite frequency adverb isn't here!

Frequency adverbs are normally placed in internal position:

Some frequency adverbs - from the above list, often, sometimes, and occasionally - can also be placed in initial and final position:

The only frequency adverb commonly used in negative sentences is often. When used negatively, the adverb not usually displaces often to the end of the sentence, especially if you use the expression very often:

You also have to be careful when using always and usually. These generally require a further adverbial to describe exactly when the action usually or normally happens:

The first example specifies exactly when the action happens - 'when I have dinner'. In the second it is clear from the meaning of the sentence although not actually stated - 'every time she comes'. In the third example the time is neither stated nor implicit in the meaning. It would be correct, however, in situations where the time is clear from the wider context of the sentence. Again, you have to think carefully about how you use these words.

Disjunctive Adverbs

These are adverbs which tell us the speaker's opinion of the situation described in the sentence, and not how, where, or when it happens. Here are some examples:

The adverb is usually placed at the beginning of the sentence, although it can also be placed after a comma at the end of the sentence:

Disjunctive adverbs are often criticised for stylistic reasons - some people claim that they are just plain wrong - but they are fairly common, especially in spoken English. There are a couple of points to be aware of.

The meaning of the first sentence is clear, and is the same as:

The second sentence is ambiguous, and could be understood in the same way as the first but also possibly as telling us that they were hopeful when they started the meeting. If you wanted to convey the second meaning it might be better to say:

Here the comma tells us that both 'hopefully' and 'on time' describe how the action in the verb happened. In the third example 'hopefully' would probably be understood as describing how we can start the meeting, to make its meaning clearly disjunctive it can be surrounded by commas:

although the sentence could still be better phrased by placing the adverb at the beginning.

Summary

This article, together with the article on simple sentence structure, provides a fairly complete description of how to put together basic sentences in English. You may be feeling that this is all very restrictive, and doesn't allow much room for creativity in how you form your sentences. Well, don't worry. Other articles will discuss ways of varying the order of the parts of the sentence, and also ways of combining simple sentences into longer, more complex, sentences.

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