Nominals, Adjectivals, and Adverbials

This chapter discusses the broad categories of nominals, adjectivals, and adverbials and offers a new way of categorizing adverbial constituents. Nominals are phrases and clauses that (1) perform nominal functions (e.g. subject, complement of a preposition, direct object) and (2) provide noun-like information (telling who or what ). When they are performing nominal functions, complete nominals can be identified by being replaced with a third-person pronoun (e.g. she , him , it , they , this ). Adjectivals are phrases and clauses that (1) perform adjectival functions (e.g. modifier of a noun, subject complement, object complement) and (2) provide adjective-like information (telling which or what kind of ). Adverbials are phrases and clauses that (1) perform adverbial functions (e.g. modifier of a verb, adjective, adverb, or clause; verb complement) and (2) provide adverb-like information (telling when , where , why , how , how much , how often , how long , and other versions of those sorts of information). Adverbials can also be categorized in terms of their scope, movability, and whether they can serve as the focus of or answer to a question. Based on those criteria, adverbials can be categorized as subjuncts, adjuncts, disjuncts, conjunctive adverbials, and sentence modifiers.