Adverbials of Frequency
Adverbials of frequency are words or phrases that indicate how often an action occurs. They provide information about the frequency of an event or action, such as "always," "often," "sometimes," "rarely," or "never." In linguistics, adverbials of frequency are important for understanding how often certain actions or events occur within a given context.
4 Key excerpts on "Adverbials of Frequency"
eBook - ePub- Edward Dr. Woods, Rudy Coppieters(Authors)
- 2013(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...Frequency Sections 166–169; 458 Frequency, both indefinite and definite, is expressed by adverbials, which normally occur in mid- and end-position respectively. • Most indefinite frequency adverbials are adverbs, ranging in meaning from an upper to a lower limit of frequency: – We always/sometimes/never drink wine. – We eat meat on numerous/some/few occasions. • Definite frequency adverbials usually take one of the following (equivalent) forms: – I visit the local bar once a week/every week/weekly. Task one ** Replace the expressions of frequency in the following sentences by alternative adverbials having more or less the same meaning. 1. I’ve met this famous comedian several times. 2. I used to see Mum every two days. 3. Even hardened soldiers sometimes become sentimental. 4. I go to the sauna once a month. 5. I’ve been to the United States many times. 6. Our neighbours have a barbecue most weekends. 7. Mr Sweethome travels abroad on very few occasions. 8. Some people go for a. walk every day of the year. 9. We usually have breakfast at 7.30. 10. My elder brother is almost never at home. 11. I borrow books from the library every other week. 12. Bossy people are often difficult to communicate with. Task two *** Complete the following sentences by adding a frequency adverbial which makes sense in the context. Example: Labour delegates meet at their party conference. ⇒ Labour delegates meet annually at their party conference. ⇒ Labour delegates meet at their party conference once a year. 1. True vegetarians eat meat. 2. A footballer performing a hat-trick is a player who scores. 3. Gypsies are people who are on the move. 4. Bill Clinton was elected President of the United States. 5. Drunk-driving is a serious offence. 6. The Olympic Games take place. 7. Even the best actors forget their lines. 8. A bimonthly journal is published. 9. Most adults go to bed between 10 p.m...
eBook - ePub- Wolfgang Klein(Author)
- 2013(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...In particular, they can indicate a definite frequency, such as once, twice, ten times, etc., or an indefinite frequency, such as occasionally, regularly, often, etc. As we shall see in section 10.4, this difference plays an important role for their interaction with durational adverbials. 5 Another difference is the observable meaning difference of adverbials such as once according to their position: (28) I met him once. Once, I met him. Is the difference just a consequence of the different interaction with the remainder of the sentence, or is it due to an internal lexical ambiguity of once ? Again, we shall try to answer this question below in the more general context of the relation between temporal Adverbials of Frequency (TADV-Q) and TT-attachment. 10.3.1 Frequency of what? TADV-Q specify the frequency of something. What is this ‘something’? We shall follow here the lines suggested in section 10.2.3 and assume that in principle, TADV-Q behave on a par with TADV-D: they lexically specify the frequency of the time spans to which a given lexical content is associated. This lexical content varies, and does so in two respects. First, we have the usual distinction in 0-state, 1-state, and 2-state contents. Second, lexical contents can be compound, as in He often called three times per day for more than an hour. In this case, several TSits are embedded in each other. Let us begin with the first distinction. 0-state contents For obvious reasons, 0-state contents allow no TADV-Q: a book, once in Russian, is forever in Russian, hence it is impossible to have, say, three such time spans on the time axis. But now compare (29) *A book was three times in Russian. Three times, a book was in Russian. Only (29a) is excluded; (29b) is possible in a context in which, for example, a library is checked for books which are not in English...
eBook - ePubBasic Russian
A Grammar and Workbook
- John Murray, Sarah Smyth(Authors)
- 2013(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...Unit 14 When we do things DOI: 10.4324/9780203559017-14 Adverbials of time Adverbials of time are words and phrases which express when (когда) something happens or happened. In this unit we look at two types of adverbials of time: those expressing how often something happened (frequency) and those expressing the point in time at which something happened. Frequency The ways of expressing the notion of frequency in Russian include using an adverb (часто, редко ‘often, rarely’), an adverbial phrase (каждый день, каждый вечер ‘every day, every evening’; раз в неделю ‘once a week’) or a negative adverb (никогда (не) ‘never’). The question to elicit ‘how often’ someone does something or something happens is как часто? Points in time To express when something happened, the following adverbs can be used: single indeclinable words: сейчас ‘now’, сегодня ‘today’, завтра ‘tomorrow’ single words in the instrumental case: утром ‘in the morning’, днём ‘in the day’, вечером ‘in the evening’, ночью ‘at night’ весной ‘in spring’, летом ‘in summer’, осенью ‘in autumn’, зимой ‘in winter’ combinations of (a) and (b): сегодня утром ‘this morning’ завтра вечером ‘tomorrow evening’ prepositional phrases where the noun phrase is in the case indicated after each preposition below: в + accusative во сколько? в шесть часов ‘at what time? at six o'clock’; в какой день? в этот день; в субботу ‘on what day? on that day; on Saturday’ до + genitive до войны ‘before the war’ после +. genitive после обеда ‘after lunch’ во время + genitive во время урока ‘during the lesson’ с + genitive … до + genitive с понедельника до пятницы ‘from Monday to Friday’ по + dative plural по вечерам, по понедельникам ‘in the evenings, on Mondays’ Days of the week In Russian the days of the week are written with a small initial letter: понедельник, вторник, среда, четверг, пятница, суббота, воскресенье...
eBook - ePubDialects of English
Studies in Grammatical Variation
- Peter Trudgill, J. K. Chambers(Authors)
- 2017(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...Part five Adverbials Chapter 19 Adverbials in English dialects J. K. Chambers and Peter Trudgill Most of the chapters in this book have been centrally concerned with dialectal variation in the verb system. In turning now to adverbials, we are not, in fact, leaving the verb system entirely. Although adverbials fill several semantic and syntactic roles in English, most of them involve modification of the verb, and the relation to the verb system is close. One of their best-known roles is to further specify the type of action expressed by the verb, as in In many languages, such specifications might be realized by affixes on the verb itself, expressing habitual, iterative and inchoative aspects. Another role is to signal the speaker's attitude towards the propositional content of the sentence, as in This function is very similar to that of the modal auxiliaries of the verbal system; the meanings indicated by the adverbs can be paraphrased with modals: The similarity between some adverbs and the modals becomes clear in Brown's discussion of double modals in Chapter 8. Speakers whose grammar does not include double modals are usually puzzled, even mystified, when they first hear such sentences as He might could do it. He should can do it. Their puzzlement usually disappears when they realize that these sentences can be paraphrased in the standard grammar by substituting an adverb for one of the modals. He could maybe do it./He could perhaps do it. He can likely do it./He can probably do it. Because they have so many diverse functions in English grammar, adverbials form the most heterogeneous category among the major lexical classes. They are usually dealt with by grammarians in subclasses determined by semantic and/or syntactic criteria, as manner adverbs, temporals, locatives, intensifiers and so on. (For a useful syntactic classification, see Jackendoff 1972: Ch. 3; for a comprehensive outline, see Quirk et al. 1985: Ch...
