What’s an adverb phrase?

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An adverbial phrase is a grammatical structure within a sentence that expresses an adverbial idea and consists of one or more words. This type of sentence typically serves one of several different functions that provide additional information about an action or description. Since this is a sentence, however, it does not contain both a subject and a verb, as that would be an adverbial clause and is a separate structure from other sentences. An adverbial phrase often serves the same purpose as an adverb in general, by modifying or describing a verb, adjective, or other adverb.

Also called an adverbial sentence, an adverbial sentence is one of several different types of sentences that can form a clause. A clause is a complete expression of an idea and complete sentences contain at least one clause which typically consists of a subject and a predicate or verb phrase. Within each clause are different sentences that consist of different words and perform different functions; an adverbial phrase works by describing another phrase. This is similar in function to how an adverb by itself describes another verb, adjective or adverb.

In the sentence “The cat ran fast,” the word “fast” is an adverb that describes the way the cat ran. An adverbial phrase serves much the same purpose, but does it with more words to express a more complex idea. “The cat jumped on the table” is a single sentence and is a complete sentence consisting of a subject and a predicate. In this sentence, the subject is a noun phrase of “The cat”, which consists of the article “The” and the noun “cat”.

The predicate in this clause is a bit more complex and consists of a verb phrase and an adverbial phrase. In this clause, the verb phrase consists only of the verb “jumped,” although a more complicated verb phrase might include an adverb such as “jumped quickly.” Since the two words are together with no additional words, the adverb is part of the verb phrase and not its own sentence.

The adverbial phrase in the full sentence, however, consists of a prepositional phrase, which in turn consists of a preposition and a noun phrase. “Onto” is the preposition in this sentence and the noun phrase is composed of the article “The” and the noun “table”. This sentence describes the action of jumping in more detail.

Adverbial phrases can serve several purposes within a sentence, often depending on the form of the sentence itself. Sentences that include a prepositional phrase, like the example above, are typically used to express manner, place, time, frequency, or purpose. Mode describes how something is done, place indicates where it is done, time shows when something occurs, frequency indicates how often it is done, and purpose demonstrates why something is done. “On the table,” for example, is used to illustrate where the cat jumped.

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