Thread: What's an Adverb?
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Old 01-27-2018, 02:19 PM   #57
sjfan
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Quote:
Originally Posted by mobama View Post
That's how I have seen it justified before, as if "bad" in "feel bad" were not an adverb. In reality, there are good arguments for that it is.

Briefly, there is form on one side and function on the other. Any given word may be (at least) two things in the same sentence depending whether you are describing its form or its function. Occasionally, forms are spelled the same and then you realize you have to go by function to explain the word properly.

By function, "bad" in "feel bad" is an adverb, even though it looks like the adjective "bad". Knowing how to figure out how words function syntactically, as distinguished from mere spelling, is a good skill to have.
The highlighted is where this goes astray: “bad” is not modifying “feel” or performing any other function of an adverb in this construction.
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