What’s happening in this sentence using “far away”?

“David and Emma live far away in the mountains.” What grammatical role do the words “far” and “away” have in that sentence? I realize that “far away” must be an adverbial, that can be both a complement and an adjunct, when I consider the following sentences. David and Emma live far away. David and Emma … Read more

How to use “same” as an adverb?

I have the following sentence: An uncommitted player reacts to different alliance types the same. I may as well say “…in the same way” but want to keep it short if possible. Is this a correct use of “same” as an adverb? I have checked several dictionaries. For example, the Cambridge Advanced Learner’s Dictionary & … Read more

What part of speech is “rather than” in the sentence, “Consider swimming rather than hiking.”

What part of speech is rather than in the sentence Consider swimming rather than hiking. Is it an adverbial phrase, or is than a comparative conjunction and rather an adverb? Answer According to Merriam Webster, rather than in this case is a conjunction As a conjunction, parallel grammatical constructions appear on each side of rather … Read more

When and why can you omit “when” (or other conjunctions or prepositions) before a gerund clause that’s used adverbially?

I had a bad experience working there. Is that sentence correct, or must I write: I had a bad experience when working there. I had a bad experience while working there. or even: I had a bad experience while I was working there. I had a bad experience when I worked there. It seems like … Read more

Can a noun be an adverb?

This question, which I first posed on the ELL site a few weeks ago, remains effectively unanswered. Although there an answer did finally get posted, it seemed to be more of a parody of an answer than a real one, to me at least. So here goes; please consider this sentence: I can barely see … Read more

Adverbial modifier with the insertion of comma

I was studying about participles and one site a guy asked the following question: How would the meaning of the following sentences differ from each other? 1. The beach, located on the far side of the river, is known for its beauty. 2. The beach located on the far side of the river is known … Read more

Which part of speech is “as” in each example of mine?

I’ve come across something that has stumped me a bit. I think that the following usage of "as" is conjunctive. Am I correct? He is the same as the dog is. Is the following usage of "as" prepositional? He is the same as the dog. Are the following sentences functionally identical to the previous one? … Read more

Double fronted adverbials with the same meaning

For me, double fronted adverbials make sense and sound fine when they have different meanings or tones, for example: Slowly, without enthusiasm, he picked up the board and… But in some texts I’ve noticed the writer using two fronted adverbials with practically the same meaning. As an example: Apparently, so they said, everything in this … Read more

Usage of at in a question

I have recently read the following quote from a famous vegan activist: How would you feel if the moment you were born someone else had already planned the day of your execution? However, I think that there is an “at” missing: How would you feel if at the moment you were born someone else had … Read more