Adverb or adjective????
 

Hi everyone

I'm working on adverbs at the moment, especially where they go in a sentence. In the exercise I'm doing you have to pick out the adverbs or adverbial phrases. In this sentence: I was extremely tired last night I thought that extremely and last night are examples of adverbs. But when I checked my answers to the key, last night is not mentioned as an adverb.

But, in a later exercise I had this: She danced at the ballet (beautifully, last night) I have to put the adverbs in the correct place in the sentence.
So is last night an adverb or not???? Or is this just a printing error in the book???? I've found mistakes in some of my books before so maybe this is another.
I've looked in my dictionary and I found last night, last week etc under adjectives!!!

Can anyone please help??
Thanks a lot :)
RJW

Re: Adverb or adjective????
 

Yes, it is an adverb - or if you like an adverbial. For your purposes it doesn't make much difference. Expressions like last night are usually described as an adverb (or adverbial) of time.

Adverbs/Adverbials are a bit of a grammatical ragbag made up of any word, phrase or even clause which modify another element in the sentence, or even the whole sentence itself. So for example :

She danced beautifully : beautifully is an adverb of manner, modifying the verb phrase- it tells us how she danced
She danced last night - last night is an adverbial of time, made up of an adjective (last) plus noun (night) which modifies all the preceding elements: it tells us when she danced beautifully.

We could add other adverbials, for example :

1. An adverbial of place : She danced beautifully at the theatre last night.
2. An adverb of frequency : She always dances beautifully.
3. A disjunct which comments on the content of the clause and modifies all of it : Frankly, I thought she danced like an elephant with two left feet last night.
etc etc - but I don't want to go too far from your question.

Have another look at your dictionary - I suspect it was telling you that last was the adjective, not the entire phrase. But if it really said that "last night/week" was an adjective, then throw it out and get a better one :)

Re: Adverb or adjective????
 

Hi Sue

Thank you very much for your reply.
You were right, last was listed as the adjective! I think I need to get more rest!
At least I won't need a new dictionary! :)

Thanks again

RJW