However, this is where the following clauses are associated with the adjectives or even the whole clause rather than the degree modifiers: (174)

There is an interpretation in which these kind of constructions are not ungrammatical.

Note that plain adverb modifiers of adjectives do not appear with such limiting clauses: (173) This clause specifies the bounds to which the degree of the property expressed by the modified adjective is given. For example, it is typical for a degree adverb to appear alongside a clausal element which follows the adjective being modified: (172) Words like very do not appear to be able to be used as typical adverbs, modifying verbs or sentences, but are restricted to modifying adjectives as are the degree adverbs: (171)īesides distributional properties, degree adverbs also have other properties that unify them. Others however are more difficult to categorise. Given that normal adverbs can be used to modify adjectives, some of the cases in (167) can simply be taken as adverbs, especially those that are formed from adjectives by the ly morpheme: (170) This would suggest that not all of these words should be categorised as degree adverbs, that is, as words with categorial features. However, others are not in complementary distribution: (169) Some of these degree modifiers are in complementary distribution with each other, indicating that they belong to the same category: (168) But there are a number of elements that do this, not all of which seem to behave the same: (167) Firstly, these elements are used primarily to indicate the degree to which the state or property expressed by an adjective holds of something. It is a complex, but interesting question as to what counts as a degree adverb. Thus we might categorise these elements as. The obvious choice for functional adjectives, therefore, are the degree adverbs that accompany them: (166) So far we have looked at auxiliary verbs, which accompany verbs, and determiners, which accompany nouns, classifying these as functional equivalents of the categories they accompany.

Chapter 1 Grammatical Foundations: Words.

What is adverb of degree