5 Tricky Things about Modifiers 👨🏽‍🎓👩🏻‍🎓 Advanced English with JenniferESL

Hi everyone. I'd like you to take a short quiz. Okay. I'll ask you five questions,

and then we'll go over the answers together.

Ready?

1. Count the number of adverbs and adjectives in the following sentence.

2. Are there any mistakes in the following sentences?

3. Are the hyphens used correctly in the following sentence?

4. Would you use any hyphens in the following sentence?

5. How is the word "married" used in the following sentences?

Did you note your answers? All right. Let's go over the questions one by one.

Okay. Question one. Count the number of adverbs and adjectives in the following sentence.

I was really surprised to meet lots of friendly people.

There's one adverb: really. There are two adjectives: surprised, friendly.

Adverbs and adjectives are modifiers. Modifiers give us information about other words in a sentence.

"Surprised" tells us about the subject "I." What kind of mood was I in? Surprised.

"Really" modifies "surprised." How surprised? Really surprised.

"Friendly" modifies "people." What kind of people? Friendly people.

Remember that adjectives modify nouns and pronouns. Adverbs modify verbs adjectives and other adverbs.

It can sometimes be a little tricky to recognize adverbs.

But we need to remember that while many adverbs end in -ly there are exceptions.

"Friendly" and "lovely" are common examples of adjectives that end in -ly.

A friendly person. A lovely day.

Can you think of other examples?

How about

"costly" and

"timely"?

You can make a costly mistake.

You can do something in a timely manner.

Note these phrases so that you can remember that "costly" and "timely" are adjectives.

There are adverbs that don't end in -ly. There's a common one that you'll see in question two.

Question two. Are there any mistakes in the following sentences? I'm a fast walker. I don't like to walk slow.

Personally, I think the sentence is fine the way it is. Did any of you want to change "slow" too "slowly"?

You could, but you don't have to.

"Fast" and "slow" are examples of words that can be both adjectives and adverbs in American English.

Some may argue that "slowly" is more standard when you need an adverb,

but I think it's perfectly acceptable and very common to say, "Go slow."

The tricky thing is that adverbs and adjectives can share forms or have similar forms.

Okay. I can say: walk slow, walk slowly, walk fast.

Do you think it's alright to say "walk real fast"?

You'll definitely hear American English speakers use "real" as an adverb.

I would say this is okay in informal speech. In a more formal situation,

I'd be more careful and I'd use "really" to express degree, as in "really fast."

You might also hear Americans use GOOD instead of WELL.

BAD instead of BADLY.

Especially in conversation. I think it's usually acceptable,

always understood, but some may say that that's not standard English.

So remember Americans might use common adjectives as adverbs.

Also, remember there are adverbs with similar forms that have the same meaning as in slow/slowly,

quick/quickly.

You'll often hear American English speakers use these two forms interchangeably.

Sometimes, though, word order is a factor. The -ly form can be preferred in a certain position.

Study these examples.

These patterns remain the same for "quick" and "quickly."

Which forms would you choose in these sentences?

I would say, "In the movie Shawshank Redemption, the main character was wrongly accused of murder."

And in this one?

I'd say, "I did it wrong. I have to start again."

Again, I think the position of the adverb influences our preferences, just like in the previous examples.

But what about these sentences?

Do "hard" and "hardly" have the same basic meaning?

No, this pair of examples reminds us that there can be words similar in form, but different in meaning.

"Hard" is both an adjective and an adverb that can refer to the power of a hit or a punch.

He hit the ball hard and it went far.

So a hard hit or hitting the ball hard

refers to the power used to strike the ball.

"Hardly" can only be an adverb, and it's an adverb of degree,

not an adverb of manner.

It doesn't answer the question "How?" It answers the question "How much?"

It means not much or almost not at all.

You hardly ate anything. Aren't you hungry?

Question three. Are the hyphens used correctly in the following sentence?

There were some heart-wrenching scenes, but the ending was heartwarming.

This is a question without a definitive answer.

The tricky thing is that there's variation when it comes to hyphenating compound modifiers.

Even dictionaries can't help us too much because not all dictionaries agree on the punctuation of compound modifiers.

But most dictionaries seem to hyphenate heart-wrenching and combine heartwarming as a single word.

Why? Who knows? Maybe it's because heart-warming is already commonly understood and widely accepted.

Maybe in another 10 years heart-wrenching will also combine and drop the hyphen in all dictionaries.

The point is that dictionaries can help, but they can also confuse us when they don't agree.

My advice is to check at least 3 sources and then go with the majority.

If you're writing for an American audience, be sensitive to patterns used in American English.

If you're writing for an audience that primarily uses British English, you might favor a different pattern.

Just be consistent.

Another tip is to learn collocations with compound modifiers.

You can write phrases you come across in a vocabulary notebook or make flashcards.

Taking the time to write these phrases will help you learn them.

Here are some useful phrases with compound modifiers that are usually hyphenated.

Question four. Would you use hyphens in the following sentence?

The hotly debated article proved that a writer had to be well informed, not well known.

Well, here we go again with compound modifiers. I'm not able to offer a definitive answer.

Not all sources agree on punctuation.

Look for patterns and study what the majority does.

A tricky thing is that word order can influence punctuation.

A pattern that many writers follow is to hyphenate a compound modifier before a noun,

but not after a linking verb.

This is true with the adverb WELL. She's a well-informed writer. The writer is well informed.

This pattern is frequently used with WELL and with numbers.

It's a ten-year-old car. The car is ten years old.

Why is this happening? Because we see a shift from adjective to adverb.

I see much more variation with adverbs that end in -ly.

I think there's a growing tendency not to use a hyphen regardless of word order.

My advice is to let dictionaries guide you, but just be consistent in your own writing.

Personally, I would write about a brightly-lit room, but many journalists and authors would write that phrase without a hyphen.

Here are some good collocations to learn. And you can decide for yourself whether to use a hyphen or not.

Just be consistent in your own writing.

And our last question. Question 5. How is the word "married" used in the following sentences?

Married women in the U.S. sometimes keep their maiden name.

It's also a fact that a woman married for the second or a third time has the right to change her name after every marriage.

The first time the past participle "married" is an adjective modifying "women." What kind of women?

Married women.

There we have a past participle functioning as an adjective.

The tricky thing is that participles can have different functions, so they can have different positions in a sentence.

The second time we have the same past participle after the noun "woman" because it's part of

a reduced adjective clause.

With the full clause, the sentence reads:

It is also a fact that a woman who is married for the second or third time...

Adjective clauses modify a noun, but remember they follow the head noun.

Even when we reduce the adjective clause to a phrase, the position remains the same.

So a single-word adjective comes before the noun it modifies or after a linking verb.

But an adjective clause (full or reduced) follows the head noun.

She's a married woman.

She's married. A woman married for the second or third time has the right to change her name after every marriage.

Whew! That was an information-packed lesson. If you found it useful, please like this video.

I hope we can meet again to study more grammar.

As always, thanks for watching and happy studies!

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