ABE English Tutorials/simple sentences/Adding modifiers

Adding modifiers


You have learned that a basic sentence has a subject noun and a verb. In this very simple sentence,

The woman walks.

... "walks" is the verb and "the woman" is the subject noun.

The word walks is a verb because it is an action, somebody or thing doing something.

A noun is the name given to a person, a place, or a thing.

For example, you are a student. You are studying at a computer. and the computer is on a desk These are nouns. Your name is a noun.

This is a complete sentence, but it is a rather simple. We can add information: The tall woman walks.

Or maybe...

The tall, blonde woman walks.

Words that describe a noun are called adjectives, There are thousands of adjectives to choose from. Here are just a few examples:


 * beautiful
 * ugly
 * short
 * long red
 * blue
 * magenta
 * aqua one
 * two
 * two hundred
 * six million good
 * righteous
 * small
 * gigantic

Of course, you can add adjectives to just about any noun, not just the subject. The adjectives have been bolded in these examples:


 * The little boy hated the rainy day.
 * Two black cats jumped up on the broken fence.
 * My oldest brother is a good gardener.

Find the adjectives in the following sentences:


 * That new house has five bathrooms.
 * Four heavy books were on the shelf.
 * Did you see the hilarious movie?
 * The beautiful, little town was hit by a fierce winter storm.

Here are the same sentences, with the adjectives shown in bold:

Let's look back at our original sentence:
 * That new house has five bathrooms.
 * Four heavy books were on the shelf.
 * Did you see the hilarious movie?
 * The beautiful little town was hit by a fierce winter storm.

The woman walks.

We added adjectives to make the noun (woman) more interesting. But we can also add words that will tell us more about the verb (walks):

The tall woman walks quickly. Or: The tall woman walks slowly but confidently.

Words that describe the verb are called adverbs. Adverbs tell when, where and how an action was done. Here are just a few adverbs that we use often:


 * now
 * yesterday
 * later
 * here outside
 * well
 * happily
 * there faithfully
 * barely
 * completely
 * sadly immediately
 * carefully
 * badly
 * cheerfully

As you can see, many adverbs end in -ly. In fact, you can make just about any adjective into an adverb, just by adding -ly: Adjective Adverb
 * beautiful
 * nice
 * kind
 * outrageous beautifully
 * nicely
 * kindly
 * outrageously

Find the adverbs in the following sentences:

Here are the answers:
 * 1) The injured animal fought fiercely.
 * 2) I put my car keys here on the table.
 * 3) Julian tended the garden well.
 * 4) Politely but firmly, Kira insisted on seeing the teacher.
 * 1) fiercely -- tells how the animal fought
 * 2) here -- tells where I left my keys
 * 3) well -- tells how Julian tended the garden
 * 4) politely and firmly -- tells how Kira insisted

Did you notice the two words, good and well? Good is an adjective: it describes what someone or something is like. Well is an adverb: it describes how something was done. Many people use good when they should be using well:

Incorrect: She did her work good. (good can only be used to describe someone or something. You can't use it to describe how something was done.) Correct: She did her work well. (well is describing how she did her work.)

Adjectives and Adverbs add information to a sentence. But they cannot take the place of the subject or verb!

If you're ready for the homework, click here.