Is it a verb or adv. phrase?

Question

In a sentence like [She carefully read the book] is "carefully" part of the VP or is it an ADV.PH?

Answer 1

Hi there! Carefully is an ADVERB in this case as it modifies "read." It is telling us the way in which she read.

And adverb phrase is a group of TWO or more words that act as an adverb.

For example:

I parked right here. "right here" would be an adverb phrase.

Hope that helps!

Answer 2

Since "carefully" modifies the verb "read" it is an adverb and thus that is an adverbial phrase.

Answer 3

Hi Stan!

An easy way that helps me remember whether a word is an adverb or a verb is seeing if it can answer the question of "how?". In the sentence, "She carefully read the book", the action would be "read the book". If you ask yourself "how was the book read?", you can answer with the word "carefully". This would mean that that is an adverb! If a word modifies the verb, it becomes the adverb. Kind of like an adjective modifies a noun, the adverb modifies the verb.

Hope this helped!

Ellie Levin