The adverbial of degree

This adverbial modifies various parts of the sentence expressed by verbs, adjectives, adverbs and statives, characterizing actions, states and quality from the viewpoint of their intensity. The identifying questions being how much? to what extent? Adverbials of degree are expressed:

• by adverbs

e.g.: The story is extremely long.

• by preposi­tional phrases with the preposition to

e.g.: All was planned to the split second.

Now you may read to your hearts content.

The adverbial of measure

This adverbial is expressed by a noun denoting a unit of measure (length, time, weight, money, temperature). It is used after statal verbs denoting processes, states, or characteristics allowing measurement, such as to measure, to last, to wait, to sleep, to walk, to run, to weigh, to cost. Nouns as adverbials of measure are preceded by numerals or the indefinite article in its, numerical function.

e.g.: The room measures 30 feet across.

We walked (for) five miles.

The box weighs a ton.

The temperature went down ten degrees below zero.

The adverbial of exception

This adverbial is expressed by nouns or prepositional phrases introduced by the prepositions but, except, save, but for, except for, save for, apart from, aside from, with the exclusion of.

e.g.: I looked everywhere except in the bedroom.

Your English is decent apart from spelling.

The road was empty except for a few cars.

7.3. The absolute nominative constructions

These constructions are called ‘absolute’ because they are not dependent on any other part of the including sentence, though they cannot be used without it, as they lack a finite verb form and thus have no predicate. From the point of view of their transformational possibility, absolute constructions fall into two types, verbal and non-verbal ones. Absolute constructions may have two forms: non-prepositional and prepositional. The latter is introduced by the preposition with (in the case of the infinitive construction it may be without).

Absolute Nominative Constructions

Prepositional	Non-prepositional
the absolute nominative with participle I construction e.g.: With his heart beating, he left the room.	the absolute nominative with participle I construction e.g.: It being late, he bolted the windows.
the absolute nominative with participle II construction e.g.: With her eyes fixed on the ground, she sat silent and still.	the absolute nominative with participle II construction e.g.: Dinner served, Mrs Marlow rang the bell
the absolute nominative with the infinitive construction e.g.: You’ll lose the last minutes, without someone to take care of you	the absolute nominative with the infinitive construction e.g.: There they remained, some of them to be entirely forgotten
the absolute nominative with the adjective construction e.g.: She hurriedly left the room with her eyes red	the absolute nominative with the adjective construction e.g.: She stood under the tree, her head full of strange ideas
the absolute nominative with the adverb construction e.g.: He turned away, with his hand still up	the absolute nominative with the adverb construction e.g.: Tea over, she again summoned us to the fire
the absolute nominative with a noun construction. e.g.: They marched towards the square, with little flags in their hands.	the absolute nominative with a noun construction e.g.: I waited, every nerve upon the stretch
the absolute nominative with a stative construction e.g.: He stood there trembling, with his face ablaze