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FUNCTION OF THE ADVERBIAL NOUN

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6. He was allowed abundance of food and liberty to walk in the courtyard of the tower. Shorthouse.

7. I think the old fellow has hitherto had scant justice done him in the main. — Lowell.

8. But since he was denied speech, he scorned the inarticulate Warner. mouthings of the lower animals.

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9. Paul, seeing a servant in the yard, ordered the boy something to eat.-R. H. Dana, Sr.

10. In Venetian streets they give the fallen snow no rest. Howells.

II. There is the large wooden reel which the blear-eyed old Deacon sent the minister's lady. — Holmes.

12. We are shown the power of our country growing and expanding. — Froude.

13. It costs a beautiful person no exertion to paint her image on our eyes, yet how splendid is that benefit. — Emerson.

Function.

CHAPTER XXIX

THE ADVERBIAL NOUN

Questions like how long? how far? when? where? are often answered by adverbs, phrases, or clauses; but they may be answered by nouns, as in the following sentences, "A while she paused; no answer came." - Scott. We are transported a hundred and fifty years back."- Macaulay. Every moment they came nearer. Next door lives a carpenter." - Miss Mitford.

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It is clear that the italicized expressions are used adverbially, modifying respectively the verb paused, the adverb back, the verb came, and the verb lives.

The base-word of each of these expressions is a noun, called an adverbial noun. It is immaterial to us what case this noun is in, but a study of Old English teaches us that it is in the objective case, while a further proof is that we frequently employ a preposition before it.

The adverbial noun usually denotes measure of some sort, of time, distance, space, weight, value, etc.

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What the Adverbial Noun modifies. 1. A verb; as,

A man could have found places where he could have jumped three thousand feet in one descent to the valley." King.

2. An adjective; as, " He was nearly a head taller than myself."

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The adjective worth is always modified by an adverbial noun answering the question how much? and frequently by others answering various other questions; as, Wheat worth a dollar a bushel last week is selling now for eighty cents." Notice that the modifiers of worth differ in closeness of relation; the closest is dollar, the next bushel, and the next week. This is not determined by position.

3. An adverb; as, "The oldest sergeant present stepped a pace forward.”

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4. A phrase; as, Centuries before this the Chinese had printed books by means of carved wooden blocks." 5. A clause; as, "His room is hung round with cases of them, each impaled on a pin driven through him something as they used to bury suicides." Holmes.

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In such a sentence as, "He is forty years of age," it is somewhat difficult to determine whether years modifies of age or of age modifies years. This arises perhaps

WHAT IT MODIFIES

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We

from the fact that neither years nor of age makes a good base for the complement of is. He is not forty years, neither does the sentence mean that he is of age. must say that is is completed by the expression forty years of age, used adjectively and having the meaning of one word. If we wish to go further and analyze this complement, we say that of age is the base, meaning old, and that this phrase is modified by the adverbial noun forty years.

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It is the same in the sentence, "We often read about precipices that are thousands of feet in descent." King. The verb are is completed by the group of words, thousands of feet in descent, having the meaning of very high. Of this group in descent is the base modified by the adverbial noun thousands of feet.

A common construction is found in the sentence, "About two weeks ago I looked down from the Mariposa trail into the tremendous fissure of the Sierras." In analyzing the adverbial element about two weeks ago, we find the base-word to be the adverb ago; this is modified by the adverbial noun about two weeks, the base of which is weeks modified first by two and then by about.

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NOTES. - 1. Many prefer to consider about a preposition, governing weeks, and ago an adjective modifying weeks. But in the familiar expression long ago, ago is said to be an adverb, and its use seems to us the same in the expression two weeks ago. It is a case where use rather than derivation should determine the part of speech. About has the same relation to two weeks that almost would have in the same position.

2. A further expression denoting degree, which may well be noticed here, is found in the sentences," John is good and strong"; "She sailed good and fast." In the first sentence it is not the author's intention to give two attributes of John; the sentence means that John is very strong. In analyzing the sentence it is best

not to separate the group of words good and strong. In the following sentence from Stevenson, "But I was rare and hungry," the substitution of rare for good makes the sentence mean, — “I was unusually hungry."

Exercise 36

Dispose of all nouns used adverbially in these sen

tences.

1. A few years later, Prof. S. F. B. Morse, an American, invented the electric telegraph.

2. If you had been able to keep awake only a year or two longer, you would not have been so wholly surprised by our industrial system. — Bellamy.

3. He is the chieftain who looms a head above all his people. -Boyesen.

4. Judgment for an evil thing is many times delayed some day or two, some century or two, but it is sure as life, it is sure as death. Carlyle.

5. The snow lay half an inch deep on the brown tiles. Howells.

6. Dante died only seven years before Chaucer was born. Lowell.

7. Soon his face was worth going far to see. -J. L. Allen. 8. The desolate and splintered walls of Horeb and Sinai are not a quarter so high. — King.

9. Some years ago I was traveling by railway, no matter whence or whither. - Froude.

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10. He was exactly five feet six inches in height and six feet five inches in circumference. — Irving.

II. Only about three weeks since, there was a leader with this or a similar title. - Ruskin.

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12. I arrived one winter morning about five o'clock, and was not so full of soul as I might have been in warmer weather. - Howells.

13. Some of you are, perhaps, more livingly aware than you were an hour ago of the depths of worth that lie around you, hid in alien lives. Wm. James.

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PECULIAR MODIFICATIONS

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14. He did not know that he bore with him from school and college a character worth much fine gold, but was pleased to find his mess so kindly. — Kipling.

15. This was a bad beginning; so, half an hour after the gun was withdrawn, the Austrian colonel ordered an assault.

CHAPTER XXX

PECULIAR MODIFICATIONS

It is not uncommon to find words modified in what seems to us an ungrammatical way; for example, an article modifying an adjective, as in the phrase all the same, or an adverb modifying a noun, as in the sentence, We walked the whole distance, exactly three miles," where the adverb exactly is a modifier of the noun phrase three miles. Some of these modifications we shall now consider.

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We find

1. The article the modifying an adjective. this in many phrases that have become current in literature no less than in conversation; for example, all the quicker, none the worse, quite the contrary, at the best. In some instances, as in the last example given, we may say that the adjective has become a substantive in meaning and hence may be modified by the article. In other cases a noun may be supplied after the adjective, and the article may be said to modify the noun. But in most cases the adjective is used in the sense of an adjective, and it is impossible, too, to supply any noun after it, so we must take the expression as we find it and say that the article modifies an adjective, the construction being idiomatical.

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