Adverbs and Adverbials: Difference Explained

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The

term adverb refers to a word class to which words like slowly,

here, now etc belong . Adverbials , on the

contrary, is a functional label , covering all the syntactic units performing

the same function as single-word adverbs , that is, they are units which

describe the action denoted by the verb . These syntactic units may be

Prepositional Phrases or Noun Phrases.

An adverbial can

describe an action by telling us how, where and when an action is

done .

Examples:

* She sings sweetly . ( how)

* She has

gone there. (where)

*He is

sleeping now (when)

Instead of

using single-word adverbials as in our examples above , we can use

Prepositional Phrases and Noun Phrases to describe actions .

* She gets

up at 6 o'

clock .

* He left

home in a hurry .

* She has

gone to the hospital.

In these

examples we have used Prepositional Phrases as adverbials .

In the

following examples we are using Noun Phrases as adverbials :

* He worked

hard all

day

* She came

back home home last week .

* They will join us tomorrow .

* She left for the US the day before yesterday.

* They opposed the government proposal tooth and nail.

Please note that the term adverb

refers to a word class while adverbial refers to different syntactic units

performing a similar function, namely, describing the action performed by the

verb.

The basic concept of describing an

action is provided by the term adverb while the different

realizations of the concept are provided by the term adverbial.