Adverbial

In grammar an adverbial is a word (an adverb) or a group of words (an adverbial phrase or an adverbial clause) that modifies or tells us something about the sentence or the verb. (The word adverbial itself is also used as an adjective, meaning "having the same function as an adverb".) Look at the examples below:

The form of adverbials

In English, adverbials most commonly take the form of adverbs, adverb phrases, temporal noun phrases or prepositional phrases. Many types of adverbials (for instance reason and condition) are often expressed by clauses.

An adverbial is a construction that modifies, or describes, verbs. When an adverbial modifies a verb, it changes the meaning of that verb. Word groups that are also considered to be adverbials can also modify verbs: for example, a prepositional phrase, a noun phrase, a finite clause or a non-finite clause. Prepositional phrase in a sentence may be adverbial; that is, it modifies a verb.

Types of adverbials that form sentence elements