Adverb groups

Adverbs that indicate when an action happened: now, then, today, tomorrow, tonight, yesterday, already, before, early, earlier, eventually, finally, first, just, last, late, later, lately, next, previously, recently, since, soon, still, yet

So far we've been talking about adverbs as if they attach to individual words or word groups. We've said they can qualify a verb group (she walked quickly), or intensify an adjective (a really cool dude) or intensify another adverb (she walked really quickly). But take a look at that last snippet again:

Once they locked me up all day long.

What happened once? If we say it's just attached to the verb group like we normally do, then we're actually saying the narrator was only ever locked up once.

But the sentence is clearly not saying that the narrator has only ever been locked up once—it's saying the narrator was only locked up all day long once:

Once they locked me up all day long.

This means the adverb is actually qualifying the entire sentence including the other adverb group, not just the main verb group.

So adverbs are even more versatile than we've been letting on. If you're feeling a little confused, that's fine. It's confusing, and there aren't really any clear rules for distinguishing when an adverb is attached to a word group versus a sentence or clause. This is just another one of those things where it's best to play around and see what happens.

This is a heads up: adverb groups aren't the only way we create meanings about time and place—we also use what we call prepositional phrases. The problem is that they overlap and sometimes look identical and have identical functions.

For example:

She sang all day—adverb group

She sang for a year—prepositional phrase

Now seriously, how are you supposed to tell the difference? There are ways to distinguish between them, but it's arguably not worth the effort—functionally they do exactly the same thing, which is qualify the action of singing.

So in this lesson, at least, we'll call any ambiguous prepositional phrases 'adverb groups', since they modify an action. It's not worth making it more complicated than that here.

If you are curious: What's a prepositional phrase?

Prepositional phrases are very important and the subject of their own lesson. Like adverb groups, they add information about where, when, how and so on—but they can become very elaborate with other word groups nested inside them (which is why they are called phrases).

Grammatically they are just a preposition (such as in, at, on, by, for) + a noun group. For example:

They took the greyhound to the vet.

In the morning, they parachuted into the canyon.

He left in the evening and had to all night be working at the library.

In that last example, all night is an adverb group embedded in a verb group. One of the key differences between an adverb group and prepositional phrase is that adverb groups can often be embedded inside a verb group like this—whereas prepositional phrases usually cannot.

When: now, then, today, tomorrow, tonight, yesterday, already, before, early, earlier, eventually, finally, first, just, last, late, later, lately, next, previously, recently, since, soon, still, yet

How long for: suddenly, all day, all night, all morning, for hours, for a year, for a while, since last week, since Tuesday, until tomorrow, not long

How often: always, constantly, ever, frequently, generally, infrequently, once, never, normally, occasionally, often, rarely, regularly, seldom, sometimes, regularly, usually, daily, nightly, weekly, monthly, yearly