5. The Adverb

The lexico-grammatical meaning of adverbs is "qualitative, quantitative or circumstantial characteristics of actions, states or qualities".

Adverb may be divided into three lexico-grammatical subclasses:

A/ qualitative adverbs /loudly, quickly, etc/ show the quality of an action or state;

B/ quantitative adverbs /very, rather, too, nearly, greatly, fully, hardly, quite, utterly, twofold, etc/ show the degree, measure, quantity of an action, quality, state, etc;

C/ circumstantial adverbs denote various circumstances /mostly local and temporal/ attending an action /yesterday, tomorrow, before, often, again, twice; upstairs, inside, behind, homewards.

Some adverbs have the grammatical category of degrees of comparison, which is expressed by three forms:

the positive degree – the comparative degree – the superlative degree. E.g.:

1) soon - sooner - soonest (if the form of the adverb coincides with the form of the adjective "- er", "-est" are added to make up the comparative and superlative degrees/;

2) well – better – best; badly – worse – worst (some adverbs have suppletive forms in the comparative and superlative degrees);

3) actively – more actively – most actively (some adverbs take "more" and most" to make correspondingly the comparative and superlative degrees).

Adverbs have different structural types of stems:

• simple: here, there, now, then, so, quite, why, how, where, when;

• derived: slow/y, sideways, clockwise, sea wards, away, ahead, apart. So, the typical adverbial affixes are: -ly, -ways, -wise, -ward(s). The characteristic adverbial prefix is a-.

• compound: sometimes, nowhere, anyhow;

• composite: to and fro; upside down.

Adverbs combine with the words of different parts of speech:

• verbs: He came late.

• adjectives: He is quite helpful.

• adverbs: He knew it too well.

• adlinks (less regularly): He had become fully aware of her.

• nouns (less regularly): The then president began to speak.

The typical functions of adverbs are adverbial modifiers:

• I will meet you tomorrow, (the adverbial modifier of time);

• I saw the book there, (the adverbial modifier of place)

• He read English badly, (the adverbial modifier of manner).

• He is very busy, (the adverbial modifier of degree).

• Sometimes adverbs perform other functions. E.g., the attribute: I have read the above statement.

6. The Numeral

The lexico-grammatical meaning of numerals is number.

Numerals have the grammatical category of numerical qualification

represented by the opposition of two forms: cardinal numerals – ordinal numerals. E.g.: nine – ninth, five – fifth, thirty – thirtieth, sixty-two – sixty-second. Cardinal numerals denote numerical quantity, the ordinal numerals denote some numerical order.

Numerals have different structural types of stems:

• simple: one, two, ten;

• derived: fifteen, eighty. The typical stem-building suffixes are -teen, -ty.

• compound: from twenty-one to ninety-nine;

• composite: nine hundred and three.

Numerals combine with nouns (three children, the third child) and link- verbs (is 10).

The Numeral often performs the function of the attribute: I have two books. Give me the second book. The numeral performs the function of other parts of the sentence less frequently: He is twenty (the predicative), Seven is not dived by two. (the subject).