Posts Tagged ‘verb’

Modification of verbs

March 19th, 2011 in Improve English

Some verbs are gradable. They refer to actions that can happen more or less completely, fully etc. Gradable verbs can be modified by various degree adverbs.

We quite enjoyed the holidays.
I entirely agree.
His attitude kind of gets on my nerves.
I was greatly annoyed by the letter.
I half believed her story.

There are some common degree adverb + verb combinations. It is impossible to give complete details here. However, a few examples are given below:

Fully understand (NOT fully agree) (NOT fully like)
Firmly believe (NOT firmly like) (NOT firmly think)
Rather like (NOT rather understand) (NOT rather think)

Questions

In questions about degree we use how much.

How much do you want a rise?

With adjectives we use how.

How old is she?

Before a singular countable noun we use how much of a.

How much of a thinker is he?

Word order

Degree adverbs like quite, half, kind of and sort of go in mid-position with the verb.

We quite enjoyed the performance. (NOT We enjoyed quite the performance.) (NOT We enjoyed the performance quite.)

Longer adjectives usually go at the end.

We liked the performance enormously. (NOT We liked enormously the performance.)