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The same applies to composite adverbs, such as
kind of, sort of, a good bit of, a lot of, a hell of, a great deal of, etc.
She is terribly awkward; they are very happy: Meg is clever enough; you speak so slowly; they settled in a
rather quiet street; the boy is unbelievably fat; she was strikingly handsome; we did it
sort of proudly; quite
definitely, too much, right there, a great deal too much.
Some adverbs - still, yet, far, much, any combine with comparative adjectives: much worse, not any better,
still greater, etc.
He could not speak any plainer.
You could do it far more neatly.
She is much wittier than her friend.
Comparative adverbs are used in clauses of proportional agreement, that is, parallel clauses in which
qualities or actions denoted in them increase or decrease at an equal rate. (See Syntax § 177)
The longer I think about it the less I understand your reasons.
To express the idea that a quality or action decreases or increases at an even rate the comparative may be
repeated, the two identical forms being connected by and:
He ran faster and faster.
3. There are some adverbs which may modify nouns or words of nominal character, functioning as
attribute, as in:
the way ahead, the trip abroad, the journey home, his return home, the sentence above (below), my friend
here, the house opposite, the day before, etc.
A few adverbs can premodify nouns without losing their adverbial character:
the then president, in after years, the above sentence, the now generation.
Their combinability with prepositional phrases can be illustrated by the following:
right up to the ceiling.
Positional characteristics
§ 243. As adverbs modify words of different classes, they accordingly occupy different positions in the
sentence. In comparison with other words, adverbs may be considered as the most movable words. However,
adverbs are not identical in their ability to be moved to another position in the structure. Thus, adverbs of
manner and degree are very closely attached to the word they modify and cannot be moved away from it. He
sings well – is the only possible arrangement of the three words, unless the change of position is caused by
inversion and a general shift of the communicative focus: Only well does he sing (он поет только хорошо). If
such an adverb is put in other positions this may result in a change of meaning in which case it is no longer an
adverb (it has already been mentioned that adverbs are often defined by position rather than form): well, he
sings when nobody is in.
If the predicate is an analytical form adverbs of frequency and indefinite time are usually placed between
its parts:
Have you ever seen him?
You are always laughing at me.