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Our Grammatical Weeds

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 September 2009

Kate Burridge
Affiliation:
Monash University, Victoria
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Summary

There is an area I have been avoiding for months. Infested with masses of rope twitchgrass and spreading rapidly too. Preparations have been made. I have brought four punnets of African marigolds, the big, vigorous ones called Crackerjack. After grunting and digging my way through the root-ridden soil and forking out as much of the twitch as possible, I squirt holes with the hose jet … A few minutes later, when the water has soaked away, in go the marigold seedlings, the great twitch destroyer, five to the square metre. I could swear I hear the twitch roots which still remain, squeaking with fear. What a lovely way to start the summer.

Peter Cundall Seasonal Tasks for the Practical Australian Gardener 1989

To dive deep or to dive deeply?

Adverbs form one of the motliest groups of all our parts of speech. Their name ‘adverb’ suggests something quite straightforward – adverbs are those words we use to modify verbs. In something like he drove slowly, slowly modifies the verb drive. But adverbs can also be used to modify other modifiers. In he drove unbelievably slowly, unbelievably modifies the adverb slowly. In an unbelievably slow driver, unbelievably modifies the adjective slow. Then there are those adverbs that don't seem to modify anything at all. In an example such as Frankly, he's a twit, the adverb frankly provides more a comment on what's contained in the rest of the sentence.

Type
Chapter
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Weeds in the Garden of Words
Further Observations on the Tangled History of the English Language
, pp. 84 - 119
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2005

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  • Our Grammatical Weeds
  • Kate Burridge, Monash University, Victoria
  • Book: Weeds in the Garden of Words
  • Online publication: 22 September 2009
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511486982.004
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  • Our Grammatical Weeds
  • Kate Burridge, Monash University, Victoria
  • Book: Weeds in the Garden of Words
  • Online publication: 22 September 2009
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511486982.004
Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Our Grammatical Weeds
  • Kate Burridge, Monash University, Victoria
  • Book: Weeds in the Garden of Words
  • Online publication: 22 September 2009
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511486982.004
Available formats
×