A common construction is found in the sentence, “About two weeks ago I looked down from the Mariposa trail into the tremendous fissure of the Sierras.” In analyzing the adverbial element about two weeks ago, we find the base-word to be the adverb ago; this is modified by the adverbial noun about two weeks, the base of which is weeks modified first by two and then by about.
Notes.—1. Many prefer to consider about a preposition, governing weeks, and ago an adjective modifying weeks. But in the familiar expression long ago, ago is said to be an adverb, and its use seems to us the same in the expression two weeks ago. It is a case where use rather than derivation should determine the part of speech. About has the same relation to two weeks that almost would have in the same position.
2. A further expression denoting degree, which may well be noticed here, is found in the sentences,—“John is good and strong”; “She sailed good and fast.” In the first sentence it is not the author’s intention to give two attributes of John; the sentence means that John is very strong. In analyzing the sentence it is best not to separate the group of words good and strong. In the following sentence from Stevenson,—“But I was rare and hungry,” the substitution of rare for good makes the sentence mean,—“I was unusually hungry.”
Exercise 36
Dispose of all nouns used adverbially in these sentences.
1. A few years later, Prof. S. F. B. Morse, an American, invented the electric telegraph.
2. If you had been able to keep awake only a year or two longer, you would not have been so wholly surprised by our industrial system.—Bellamy.
3. He is the chieftain who looms a head above all his people.—Boyesen.
4. Judgment for an evil thing is many times delayed some day or two, some century or two, but it is sure as life, it is sure as death.—Carlyle.
5. The snow lay half an inch deep on the brown tiles.—Howells.