ADV: adverb
Definition
Adverbs (副詞 / fùcí) typically modify verbs, adjectives, and other adverbs for such categories as time, manner, degree, frequency, or negation.
- 你 慢慢/ADV 說/VERB / nǐ mànman shuō “Speak slowly.”
- 她 非常/ADV 快樂/ADJ / tā fēicháng kuàilè “She is extremely happy.”
- 他們 很/ADV 早/ADV 起來/VERB / tāmen hěn zǎo qǐlái “They get up very early.”
Some adverbs also modify clauses with conjunctive and discursive functions.
- 他 卻 沒有 跟 我 説 / tā què méiyǒu gēn wǒ shuō “He didn’t tell me, however.”
- 今天 當然 沒 人 啊 ／ jīntiān dāngrán méi rén a “Of course nobody’s here today.”
A small number of adverbs may also modify numerals and determiners, or nouns and pronouns.
- 差不多 五千 / chàbùduō wǔqiān “almost five thousand”
- 連 他 都 不 去 了 / lián tā dōu bù qù le “Even he’s not going.”
There is a closed subclass of pronominal adverbs that refer to circumstances in context, rather than naming them directly; similarly to pronouns, these can be categorized as interrogative, demonstrative, etc. These should be treated as adverbs when modifying a predicate, but otherwise some of them can function as a nominal in the syntax, in which case they should be tagged PRON.
- 你 為什麼 不 來 / nǐ wèishénme bù lái “Why aren’t you coming?”
- 我 這樣 做 的 / wǒ shì zhèyàng zuò de “I do it like this.”
Note that although some adverbs express temporal information, many common time expressions (e.g., 今天 / jīntiān ‘today’, 去年 / qùnián “last year”, 晚上 / wǎnshàng “night”) are actually nouns and should be tagged NOUN. Those temporal nouns can pre-modify another noun by adding a 的 / de suffix but adverbs cannot.
Examples
- Manner adverbs
- 慢慢 / mànman “slowly”, 互相 ／ hùxiāng “mutually”
- Temporal, aspectual, and modal adverbs
- 即將 / jíjiāng “about to”, 將 / jiāng “will”, (正)在 / (zhèng)zài “in progress”, 寧可 / nìngkě “would rather”, 可能 / kěnéng “possibly” (NB: also ADJ “possible” and NOUN “possibility”)
- Conjunctive adverbs
- 所以 / suǒyǐ “therefore”, 卻 / què “however”, 例如 / lìrú “for example”, 然後 / ránhòu “afterwards”, 那 / nà “then; in that case”, 就 / jiù “then; as a result”
- Frequency and duration adverbs
- 經常 / jīngcháng “often”, 一下 / yīxià “once; for a little while”, 多次 / duōcì “many times”
- Negation adverbs
- 不 / bù “not”, 未 / wèi “not yet”, 永不 / yǒngbù “never”
- Numeral-modifying adverbs
- 大概 / dàgài “approximately”, 差不多 / chàbùduō “almost”, 不足 / bùzú “less than”, 至少 / zhìshǎo “at least”, 最多 / zuìduō “at most”
- Noun-modifying adverbs
- 連 / lián “even”, 又 / yòu “another”
- Pronominal adverbs
- 怎樣 / zěnyàng “how”, 這樣 / zhèyàng “this way, like this, thus”, 那麼 / nàme “so”, 為什麼 / wèishénme “why”
- Other
- 都 / dōu “also; all”, 也 / yě “also”, 才 / cái “then and only then”, 越來越 yuèláiyuè “more and more”, 當然 / dāngrán “of course”, 難道 / nándào “could/must it be that…?”
- “for example”, “such as”: 比如 / bǐrú, 比如說 / bǐrúshuō, 例如 / lìrú, 譬如 / pìrú,
- “like”: 像 / xiàng (note this can also function as a main verb; an example of the adverbial usage is 像他昨天說… / xiàng tā zuótiān shuō “Like he said yesterday…”)
ADV in other languages: [bej] [bg] [bm] [ca] [cs] [cy] [da] [el] [en] [es] [ess] [et] [eu] [fi] [fro] [fr] [ga] [grc] [gub] [hu] [hy] [it] [ja] [ka] [kk] [kpv] [ky] [myv] [no] [pcm] [pt] [qpm] [ru] [sl] [sv] [tr] [tt] [uk] [u] [urj] [xcl] [yue] [zh]