Nouns Used as Adverbs

Dr. Vavra's Main Course Menu Grammar Course Main Menu	Pennsylvania College of Technology Rose Parisella Productions
Dr. Ed Vavra's KISS Approach to Sentence Structure
Return to the Instructional Rules of the Game Menu

The Eight Other Constructions

# 1 Nouns Used as Adverbs

Some nouns function as adverbs, usually to indicate a spatial or temporal orientation: "The plane crashed five miles from here." The construction is close to the prepositional phrase:

They drove six miles. They drove for six miles.

but, as in our example, there frequently is no preposition that fits such that we could say that it is ellipsed. Thus the construction needs to be included in the theory. And it proves useful. For example, it provides a simple explanation for "fishing" in:

They went fishing.

In traditional grammar texts, such verbals create problems, if they are not ignored, but why can it not simply be considered as a gerund, i.e., a verbal noun, here functioning as an adverb, comparable to "They went north"? It does not indicate spatial or temporal orientation, but it certainly functions as an adverb, indicating the purpose of their going.
Once the construction is admitted into the toolbox, it becomes useful in other ways. Consider the following line from Shakespeare's Sonnet #130 ("My mistress'eyes"):

I have seen roses damask'd, red and white, At first, I was tempted to consider "red" and "white" as post-positioned adjectives to "roses," but that does not really fit the meaning since it could mean that some of the roses were red and some were white. One could explain "red" and "white" as objects of an ellipsed preposition (*in* red and white), but, although I would accept that explanation, I can see no reason for telling a student who wants to explain them as nouns used as adverbs that the student is wrong.