A corelation between adverbs prepositions and adverbial particles contrastive approach

Simeon Peter speaks about the English grammar as:

"something living and developing under continual fluctuations, something that is founded on the past and prepares the way for the future, something that is not always consistent or perfect, but progressing and perfectible - in one word, human."(Badescu Alice, 1984; p. 4)

According to Simeon Peter's affirmation, grammar is always present in our life and becomes a part of it. No language can be spoken correctly without grammar. The native speakers of a language know how to use a word or an expression but not many of them use words in a correct way or not many of them are aware of the reason they should use the word in that way.

While Shakespeare wrote his dramas for 5 million of English, nowadays English is spoken by more than 300 million people. English has acquired in the twentieth century a dominant position in many fields of human activity. It has become a world language and it is spoken on every continent of the world from Australia and New Zealand to North America.

When one wants to acquire English, for instance, one should learn not only vocabulary but also rules concerning its grammar. Communication cannot exist without knowing the language; that implies for learning a little grammar, as well.

Pupils at school are taught mainly about verbs, tenses, nouns, the way they are used and in what circumstances. I think that prepositions are as important as any other part of the English grammar. In my opinion one has to know whether in any construction a preposition is required or not;

and which preposition to use when one is required. It can be especially troublesome to a Romanian speaker to find out that a certain construction in Romanian requires a preposition, whereas a similar one in English does not, and vice versa ('to listen to music' == a asculta muzica; 'to enter a room' = a intra intr-o camera)

I should also note that many words used mainly as prepositions can also be used as conjunctions and adverbs. ('Your house is near mine' - 'He is standing near '- adverb)

An other great problem for an English language learner should be the synonymy and polyfunctionalism of prepositions. One single preposition may express several relations (for example by - relation of space, of time, of agency, of numerical distribution); or one single relation may be expressed by several prepositions (for example the idea of residence - at, in, with, -within, inside}.

I would like to make a spotlight on prepositions presenting several facts that seem to be important to me. The materials that the present study relies on are the theoretical books of some great grammarians: L. Levitchi, A. Badescu, A.J. Thomson, A.V. Martinet, R. Quirk.

CHAPTER I

GENERAL PRESENTATION

After many years of studying English we observed that between the Ro- manian adverbs, prepositions and adverbial particles are many differences as well as similarities.

Our primary aim in writing this work was to point out the contrast between the morphological aspects of the English adverbs, prepositions and adverbial par- ticles and of that of the Romanian ones.

For a better understanding of a foreign language grammar it is very im- portant to know and understand the grammar of your own language, but this is not enough because each language has its own peculiarities which must be correctly understood for an accurate use of the foreign language. Adverbs, prepositions and adverbial particles seem to be morphological parts of speech which; when they aren't correctly understood may lead to misunderstandings and to a wrong per- ception of them.

In writing this work we tried to underline the main similarities between the English and the Romanian adverbs, prepositions and adverbial particles.

1. Definitions and Characteristics of the Adverb

The most English grammarians define the adverb as being the uninflected part of speech which modifies or determines a verb, an adjective, an adverb, a sentence and sometimes a noun.

By Leon D. Levitchi (Levitchi, 1970:244) "the adverb modifies or determines a verb, an adjec- tive, another adverb and sometimes a whole sentence or clause. Far more unfrequently it may determines a noun."

For example:

- He works hard for the exam. = in this example the adverb - hard'

modifies the verb.

- She came yesterday. = in this example the adverb 'yester- day'

determines the verb.

- He writes beautifully. = in this example the adverb 'beau-tifully'

modifies the verb.

- We saw an extremely interesting picture. = in this exam- ple the

adverb 'extremely' determines an adjective.

- John spoke quite well. = in this example the adverb 'quite'

determines another adverb.

- You will probably find the novel in your library. = in this

example the adverb 'probably' determines a sentence.

- The man here. = in this example the adverb 'here' deter-mines a

noun, in fact it fulfills the function of an adjectives of determinative type.

The word 'adverb' suggests the idea of adding to the meaning of a verb, it can tell us something about the action in a sentence by modifying a verb, by telling us how, when where something happens or is done.

Adverb can also modify: - adjectives: very good

- other adverb: very soon

- prepositional phrases: You are entirely in the wrong.

- complete sentence: Strangely enough, I won first prize

- nouns: The man ever there is a doctor.

According to Randolph Quirk (Quirk, 1972:267) "the adverb is an item that does not fit the definitions for other parts of speech. As a consequence some grammarians have removed certain types of items from the class entirely and established several ad- ditional classes rather than retain these as subsets within a single adverb class."

The majority of adverbs have the derivational suffix - 'ly' and this is the most common characteristic of the adverbs. Both the '-ly' suffix and the less common '- wise' suffix: 'clockwise', 'moneywise'; are productive suffixes by means of which new adverbs are created from adjectives and from nouns respec- tively.

There are two types of syntactic functions that characterize the traditional adverbs, but an adverb need only one of these: clause constituent and modifier of adverb.

1.1 Clause Constituent

An adverb may function in the clause itself as adverbial, as a constituent distinct from subject, verb, object and complement:

E.g.: - John always loses his pencil.

- I spoke to him outside.

- Perhaps my suggestion will be accepted.

- They may well complain about his appearance.

- I quite forgot it.

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