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San Jose City College

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II. Adverbial Expressions of Time, Place, Manner, Purpose, and Degree

Movable Adverbs and Transitions

Adverbial Expressions of time, place, manner, purpose, degree are best placed at the end of the sentence.

Time	Safia Amajan, a senior Afghan official specializing in women's rights, was gunned down shortly after 7 a.m. on September 25, 2006.
Place	Amajan had worked in the women's affairs department in Kandahar province for five years.
Manner	A Taliban gunman shot Amajan four times *with a pistol*.
Reason	She was assassinated for promoting women's right to an education and vocational training.
Degree	The local women's networks in Kandahar will miss Amajan very much.

Movable Adverbs and Transitions

MOVABLE ADVERBS: When adverbs modify the whole sentence, they can be moved to different sentence positions. Examples are actually, certainly, fortunately or unfortunately, obviously, recently and only.

     ♦ Certainly, the loss of Safia Amajan was a terrible blow to all Afghans who are working for peace, prosperity, and human rights.
     ♦ The loss of Safia Amajan was certainly a terrible blow to all Afghans who are working for peace, prosperity, and human rights.
     ♦ No one, unfortunately, feels secure in Afghanistan.
     ♦ The Taliban are continuing to kill those who want progress, unfortunately.
     ♦ Unfortunately, young girls are fearful when they go to school.

When the adverb only moves, it changes the meaning of the sentence. Different meanings are implied by these different sentence positions.
     ♦ Only twenty people were slightly injured in the most recent attack. NoteOnly twenty people implies that more could have been injured, given the severity of the attack.

Note: Given the severity of the attack means when one considers how severe the attack was.
     ♦ Twenty people were only slightly injured in the most recent attack.  Note Only modifies the adverb, slightly, which modifies the adjective, injured. The wording emphasizes the fact that the injuries were not serious.
     ♦ Twenty people were slightly injured in the most recent attack only.  Note  This wording implies that there have been many attacks recently and that these attacks have injured many. The emphasis draws attention to the implied frequency of attacks.

Extra note: In the above sentence, the object after the verb implies is a compound noun clause object. Two things are implied. There is no comma between compound noun clause objects.

TRANSITIONS are movable adverbial conjunctions. Note their position in the following example sentences. The meaning is the same, regardless of placement.

Violence and Taliban threats are on the rise in Afghanistan.
     ♦ As a result, people are afraid to leave their homes.
     ♦ Many people, as a result, are afraid to leave their homes.
     ♦ Many people are afraid to leave their homes, as a result.

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