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I don’t want to quarrel with the children listening.
7. An adjective, an adverb, a participle,
a noun, a
prepositional
phrase, an infinitive, an infinitive or participial phrase introduced
by a conjunction.
I’ll come earlier if necessary.
Her conduct when there was most unaccountable.
When argued with, Ida had one answer.
As a little girl she used to make daisy-chains.
I began to wonder whether he'd manage to give an interview while still in his right mind.
He quickly did this, and while doing it dropped his umbrella.
As if to bring matters to a focus, Tess’s father was heard approaching at that moment.
8. A Clause (as part of a complex sentence).
Won’t you stay till the rain stops?
We stayed at home because it rained.
Structural classification of the adverbial modifier
§ 98. From the point of view of its structure the adverbial modifier, may be simple, phrasal, complex,
clausal.
We started early.
We started at five in the morning.
John sat with his elbows on the table and his hands clasped.
When the cat is away, the mice will play.
Semantic characteristics of the adverbial modifier
§ 99. Semantically adverbials denote place, time, manner, cause, purpose, result, condition, concession,
attendant circumstances, comparison, degree, measure, exception, thus forming semantic classes, such as
adverbials of place, time, etc.
The semantic class of an adverbial may be identified directly (absolutely) or indirectly (relatively). It is
identified directly by lexical meaning of the word or phrase used as an adverbial, as in:
I saw him yesterday. (time)
She spoke in a loud voice. (manner)
In other cases the semantic type is identified relatively, that is, only through the relationship of the adverbial
to the modified part of the sentence, as is often the case with participles, infinitives, and some prepositional
phrases. Thus the phrase with fear functions as an adverbial of manner in the sentence She spoke with fear and
as an adverbial of reason in the sentence She shook with fear. The phrase Walking along the track to
Buckmaster’s denotes motion in some direction, but in the sentence Walking along the track towards
Buckmaster’s Bowen burst into song it acquires temporal meaning and serves as an adverbial of time.
In the majority of cases, an identifying question may help to distinguish between adverbial modifiers from
the semantic point of view. When? suggests time, where? - place, in what case? - condition, etc. However, it is
not always possible to find an identifying question for every adverbial. Sometimes one and the same question
word may correspond to different kinds of adverbials. Thus how? may suggest manner, comparison and degree.
On the other hand such adverbials as those of result and attendant circumstances have no corresponding
question words.
Semantic classes of adverbial modifiers