Brenda W.

asked • 11/24/15

english summary

Which sentence does not contain an adverb? a) He waved his hand emphatically so that Mary would be sure to see him. b) I couldn't hold onto the glass because it was to slippery. c) The motorcycle was sleek and shiny, and Kate loved riding on it. d) It is essential to take breaks often while studying.

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Michael J. answered • 11/24/15

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Adverbs are words that describe an action.  Some examples are "very", "slowly", "intelligently", etc.
 
The best to find an adverb is to ask yourself these types of questions:  "How fast, how slow?", and "how often does he/she perform a task?".
 
Using these helpful tips, we can apply them to find the adverbs in each sentence. 
 
 
Sentence A has the adverb emphatically.  Empathetic is to display one's understanding of another's feelings.  The person was very empathetic.
 
Sentence B has the adverb "slippery".  Slip is an action verb, and the glass doesn't have much grip, making it that slippery.
 
Sentence C does not have an adverb.
Sentence  D has the adverb "often".  It describes how much a person studies.
 
 
I would say that sentence C does not have an adverb.
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Ed M.

I agree with almost everything Michael J. has written here, including his judgement about sentence c) which really provides the answer to your question. I take exception only to the analysis of slippery as an adverb; I really believe this word is always used as an adjective as it is in sentence b). As proof, notice that we can say the slippery glass as well as The glass is slippery, and this is the classic test for determining that a word is an adjective in English, i.e., if it can both premodify a noun in a noun phrase and also occur in the predicate of a linking verb like be.
 
Another characteristic of adjectives is that most can be premodified by words often called intensifiers, which are traditionally viewed as a subclass of adverbs and this might be the key to explain why sentence b) in fact does have an adverb and is therefore not the correct answer your question. I'm assuming that the original sentence b) was in fact "I couldn't hold onto the glass because it was too slippery" (and probably "on to" rather than "onto," but that's an explanation for another WyzAnt Resource)--a common error, one that even I make a lot more frequently than I care to admit not because I don't know the difference between to and too but rather my pre-arthritic fingers and pre-carpal wrists sometimes conspire not to type exactly what it is my brain is conceiving. The inadequacies of typed communication aside (especially on sticky keyboards like mine that could use a good cleaning), if indeed the original phrase was "too slippery," then too is easily analyzed as an intensifier, read adverb, occurring before the adjective slippery, just as we could put another "intensifying adverb" before it like very or extremely.
 
 
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11/25/15

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