Core Patterns
Adverbs
What you’ll learn
- Hang an adverb under whatever it actually modifies
- Chain a second adverb off the first
- Recognise a sentence adverb that modifies nothing inside the clause
- Keep a negative in the verb phrase rather than on a slant
Adverbs on verbs
The common case: an adverb telling you how, when or where the action happened. It hangs on a slant beneath the verb, exactly like an adjective beneath a noun.
Word order does not matter. He answered immediately and Immediately he answered produce the same diagram, because the diagram shows what modifies what, not what came first.
“He answered immediately.”
- nsubjNominal subject
- ROOTRoot of the sentence
- advmodAdverbial modifier
Comparing the two views
advmod says it. The only difference is that the tree also tells you the relation is specifically adverbial rather than, say, adjectival.Adverbs on adjectives and other adverbs
An adverb can modify a word that is itself a modifier. In surprisingly quickly, quickly modifies the verb and surprisingly modifies quickly.
The notation follows the grammar exactly: the second adverb hangs off the first adverb’s slant, not off the base line. That chain can go as deep as the sentence does.
Find what the nearest adverb modifies
Ask “boiled how?” → quickly. So quickly attaches to the verb.Then ask what the next one modifies
“Quickly to what degree?” → surprisingly. So it attaches to quickly, not to boiled.Hang each off the line above it
A short connector joins the second slant to the first.
“The kettle boiled surprisingly quickly.”
- detDeterminer
- nsubjNominal subject
- ROOTRoot of the sentence
- advmodAdverbial modifier
Comparing the two views
Adverbs that modify the whole sentence
Honestly, nobody noticed. — Honestly does not say how the noticing happened. It is the speaker commenting on the statement itself. That is a disjunct, and it sits outside the clause.
The notation treats it like a vocative: a short line floating above the diagram, attached to nothing.
“Honestly, nobody noticed.”
- advmodAdverbial modifier
- nsubjNominal subject
- ROOTRoot of the sentence
Comparing the two views
advmod — the same label it would give an ordinary manner adverb — so from the dependency parse alone, Honestly, nobody noticed and Nobody noticed immediately have identical structure. The distinction survives only in the Reed-Kellogg diagram.A note on not
not is technically an adverb, but in this app it stays inside the verb phrase rather than hanging on a slant — did not arrive is written as one unit. It is part of how the verb is formed, not detail added to it.
The dependency parse gives it its own label, neg, so the tree separates it out while the diagram does not. Contractions split too: didn’t becomes did + n’t, and the two halves carry different tags.
Key terms
- Adverb
- A word modifying a verb, adjective or adverb. Tagged
RB(orRBR/RBSfor comparative and superlative), relationadvmod. She spoke softly. — on a verb. She spoke too softly. — on another adverb. a very old map — on an adjective.See: Adjectives & Adverbs
- Disjunct
- An adverb commenting on the whole sentence rather than modifying anything in it. Drawn floating above the clause, unconnected. Frankly, the plan failed. Luckily, nobody was hurt.
- Adverbial
- Anything doing an adverb’s job — a single word, a prepositional phrase, or a whole clause. All three hang below the word they modify. She left early. She left at dawn. She left when the bell rang. — a word, a phrase and a clause.