Adverbial (Q14814)

An adverbial, or 'adverb', narrowly defined, is a part of speech whose members modify verbs for such categories as time, manner, place, or direction. An adverbal, broadly defined, is a part of speech whose members modify any constituent class of words other than nouns, such as verbs, adjectives, adverbs, phrases, clauses, or sentences. Under this definition, the possible type of modification depends on the class of the constituent being modified [Crystal 1997,11; Payne 1997,69].