Tim32

Modal verbs and adverbs ^

Posted On Wednesday 8 June 2011 by Murray Colpman (Muzer)

We've been thinking about modal verbs, and also about how to use multiple adverbs, and we've come up with a solution we all like:

First of all, I'll talk about a new construct for adverbs. As everyone knows, the standard "short form" construct is:

= I eat effectively

As you saw from the previous post, these always apply to the term immediately to the right, so:

= "I eat in a way which is complexly effective."

If you want to say "I eat in a way which is effective and complex", you can now use the "long form" construct, which is:

= "I eat in a complex and effective way" - we translate it as "I eat as complex and effective".



So, this brings us onto modals. These work EXACTLY like adverbs:

= "I must eat"

This means you can stack them like adverbs:

= "I must be able to eat" ("I must can eat")

And you can use the new long form like adverbs:

= "I can and must eat".

Now here's where it gets complicated, but still makes sense - using them WITH adverbs.

If you want to say "I quickly must eat" - that is, I must eat in a short time from now, but it doesn't matter how I eat - you can say:

If you want to say "I must quickly eat" - in other words, "I must eat in a quick way, but it doesn't matter when I eat" - you can say:

And if you want to say "I quickly must quickly eat" - in other words, "I must eat in a quick way in a short time from now" - you can say:

I hope it's all clear!