Yeah, I don’t know how to express in words what I mean.
Oh ok, I think that makes more sense. “Over the chair” is giving more detail about the path of the chase.
That’s really good the Oxford Languages dictionary from google search specifies that the meaning highlighted in red is an adverb for me.
I have a mac too. I’ll try to look for your dictionary.
No, the adverb definition is a different definition with a different example sentence where e.g. there is no prepositional object. If you expand “More definitions” you’ll find the same definition that @LMD highlighted in the preposition section.
This post took me 27 minutes to practice simple sentence problems and make this post.
Clever John carefully ate the very juicy steak.
Action verb: ate
Subject: John
Object: steak
Modifiers:
“Clever” modifies “John”
“carefully” modifies “ate”
“the” modifies “steak”
“very” modifies “juicy”
“juicy” modifies “steak”
Conclusions: John is clever. He is some steak carefully. That steak was very juicy.
John thought hard about chemistry.
Action verb: thought
Subject: John
Modifiers:
“hard” modifies “thought”
Prepositional phrase: “about chemistry”. It’s an adverb modifying “hard”. “about” relates “chemistry” with “thought” to tell us what John was thinking about.
Conclusions: John thought hard about something. The thing he was thinking hard about was chemistry.
John put the toy soldier in the compartment in the box on the shelf in his room.
Action verb: put
Subject: John
Object: soldier
Modifiers:
The first “the” modifies “soldier”
“Toy” modifies “soldier”
Prepositional phrase: “in the compartment” modifies “put”. It’s an adverb. The preposition “in” relates “compartment” with “put” to tell us the location of the putting action.
The second “the” modifies “compartment”.
Prepositional phrase: “in the box” I think modifies “compartment”. It’s an adjective. “In” relates “box” and “compartment” to tell us where the compartment is.
The third “the” modifies “box”.
Prepositional phrase: “on the shelf” modifies “box”. It’s an adjective. “on” relates “shelf” with “box” to tell us the location of the box.
The fourth “the” modifies “shelf”.
Prepositional phrase: “in his room” modifies “shelf”. It’s an adjective. “In” relates “room” with “shelf” to tell us where the shelf is located.
“his” modifies “room”.
Conclusions: John put the toy soldier in a compartment. That compartment is in a box that’s on a shelf. That shelf is in his room.
I forgot to time this post. It may have took me about 15-20 mins to make.
The delicious cake with berries unfortunately fell onto the dirty floor from the table.
Action verb: fell
Subject: cake
Modifiers:
The first “the” modifies “cake”.
“Delicious” modifies “cake”
Prepositional phrase: “with berries” is an adjective that modifies cake. The preposition “with” relates “berries” with “cake” to tell us what ingredient the cake had.
“Unfortunately” modifies “fell”.
Prepositional phrase: “onto the dirty floor” is an adverb that modifies “fell”. The preposition “onto” relates “floor” with “fell” to tell us where the cake landed when it fell.
The second “the” modifies “floor”.
“Dirty” modifies “floor”.
Prepositional phrase: “from the table” is an adverb that modifies “fell”. The preposition “from” relates “table” and “fell” to tell us the starting place that the fell action happened.
The third “the” modifies “table”.
Conclusions: There was a cake that fell. That cake was delicious. The cake was made with berries. It was unfortunate that the cake fell. The cake fell onto the floor. The floor was dirty. The cake fell from the table that it was on.
I read the grammar article for 9 mins and worked on this post for about 15 mins
Examples of groups: “My lunch” is a group with a sandwich, soup, and a drink.
That makes sense. The speaker’s lunch is a group cuz it has his sandwich, his soup, and his drink. You can talk about all those food items with one word.
A group can be viewed as one thing , one unit.
I saw what “unit” meant in Merriam Webster, I think it said something that is its own thing but can also be part something else.
Here is a picture of the definition I read(it’s marked in red):
We can’t think about hundreds of things at once, but we can think about three groups at once, even if they’re big groups (a pickle has over a billion trillion atoms, but it’s still easy to think about as one thing).
That’s true I can think about what I’m going to eat today by using the group words breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
A complete thought (clause) means a simple sentence. ”Clause” is the grammar word for “simple sentence”.
Ok, a clause is the grammar way to say simple sentence.
An incomplete thought (phrase) generally means a noun, verb, adjective or adverb, plus modifiers. It takes at least two phrases to make a sentence (a verb and a noun, the subject).
Ok, I think I see what a phrase means in grammar. It’s groups of words that can’t form their own simple sentence, but if you combine them they can make a clause.
Note: A phrase can be a single word. It’s not wrong, and sometimes convenient, to say that the subject of a sentence is always a “noun phrase” (a phrase which functions as a noun) because there’s nothing wrong with groups with only one thing in them.
That’s good to know. I was thinking: how small can one phrase be? Like can it contain one word?
I can only think of proper nouns like, “Joe” or “Elizabeth”. Those could be their own noun phrase.
I think I also read the oxford languages definition of unit. Here it is:
I think that’s my bad I didn’t tell the whole story. I have a habit of looking up the two dictionaries and if I one doesn’t make sense I look at the other.
I think that’s a problem cuz it leads to misquoting. I don’t know what to do about it. I think if I want to say something factual about the definitions, next time, I could copy and paste what definitions made some sense to me on a note pad. And when I write about it I have something to reference.
I read Phrases from the grammar article for about 5 mins and made this post in 18 mins.
A noun (or verb, adjective or adverb) phrase functions as a noun (or verb, adjective or adverb) and can be used anywhere a noun (or verb, adjective or adverb) would be used.
I see we’re treating the noun phrase as one thing or as one whole noun. It works to treat phrases as their own thing, as their own whatever is the main word.
The sentence’s verb is a verb phrase, “very quickly ate”. The phrase’s main word is the verb “ate”, and it has one modifier, “very quickly”.
I see how "ate"s modifier “very quickly” counts as one modifier not two. “Very” is modifying “quickly” not “ate”.
Detail: It’s ambiguous whether “during the day” modifies the verb “ate”, the whole verb phrase “very quickly ate”, or the whole clause (“cats ate kibble” plus modifiers).
Yeah, I think I see how ambiguous it could get like what is a modifier modifying.
This ambiguity is typical of adverbs at the ends of clauses.
Ok, the ambiguity happens a lot when adverbs are at the end of clauses.
However, it doesn’t matter. The sentence means the same thing regardless.
Ok, I think I see cuz if “during the day” modified only “ate” it tells us when the eating happened. “very quickly” still modifies “ate” to tell us how the eating was done.
If “during the day” modified “very quickly ate” then it would still be true. The “very quickly” part still happens in the day time.
I want to try this assignment cuz it’s a game and I think I would like it more. I already downloaded it and played a bit yesterday.
Literally, I learned how to use the controls on mobile and that you can connect the objects with other objects or connects objects with other actions(e.g. baba is win). I saw you can make a chain of connected objects and actions.
I think I’m learning how to use words and apply them to other words. Like my brain is making those connections.
I like how the game uses logic to win. I liked the first two levels so far.
Yeah, I’ll do that.
