Clause elements: Adverbials (SVFL)

Maria’s book consists of sentences. Sentences are built of one or more clauses, that in turn consist of clause elements. Here is a clause: Just nu ser du en film. One clause element describes the person or thing that the clause is about, the subject. Another clause element describes what is happening, the predicate.

This always contains at least one verb. Yet another clause element is the object - the thing or person that the subject does something with. But here is one clause element, that says something about time. just nu It tells us when you are watching the movie. It’s an adverbial.

Adverbials are clause elements that give more information about for example time, place or the reason for something happening. They often answer questions like: When? Where? How? Why?

Here are three clauses: Maria läser spökhistorier. Alla lyssnar. Men något händer... These clauses describe an event, but we know nothing about where, when, or how it’s taking place. Adverbials add information, and extend the clauses.

Like this: Maria läser spökhistorier i sitt rum. Alla lyssnar noga, eftersom det är spännande. Men den här kvällen händer något... You can find adverbials in a clause by asking the questions we mentioned: When? Den här kvällen Where?

I sitt rum Why? Eftersom det är spännande How? Noga. Adverbials are clause elements that can vary in how they look. This word is describing how they are listening.

It’s an adverb. I sitt rum ..is an adverbial that starts with a direction word: a preposition. It’s a prepositional phrase. Many adverbials are prepositional phrases. An adverbial can also be one of those clauses that can’t work by itself as a sentence: subordinate clauses.

They can also be phrases like this one: Den här kvällen Which is a noun with extra words belonging to it: a noun phrase What all these adverbials have in common is that they explain more about the clause. They can also be divided into groups. Adverbials that are about when something happened for instance, form one group Temporal adverbials. The adverbials we’ve been looking at so far give us more information about the clause itself. But there are adverbials that do not respond to any of the questions we’ve mentioned.

Maria vill skrämmas. Maria vill troligen skrämmas. What’s the meaning of this word? Troligen It means that the speaker thinks that the clause is true but doesn’t know for sure. The word says something about the whole clause.

These are sentence adverbials. Spöken finns såklart inte. This type of sentence adverbial tells about whether you’re sure about what you’re saying. Lingo vet lyckligtvis inte det. Spökhistorien är tyvärr kort.

These sentence adverbials reveal your opinion about what you’re saying. Nästa historia är däremot lång. Därför berättar Maria den också. And other sentence adverbials, like these, show us how this clause links with what has been previously said. Some sentence adverbials completely change the meaning of the clause.

Compare these clauses: Det finns spöken. Det finns inte spöken Jag är rädd Jag är inte rädd Inte ..is a negation. When you add this to a clause... the meaning becomes the opposite. Än idag kan man höra spöket knacka på hos människor för att bli insläppt i värmen... - Hohoo…! - Eh...jag ska...bara...