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Adjectives that look like Adverbs?

Expert replies
by MAAJ » Fri Mar 25, 2011 1:31 pm
"The daily newspaper"

According to MGMAT this is fine. But my first impression was that it was wrong 'cause I thought that "daily" was an adverb and thus could not modify newspaper.

For me it sounded like: The slowly car / The naturally smile

So... how do I determine if -ly forms are adverbs or adjectives? Are there other cases similar to this?
"There's a difference between interest and commitment. When you're interested in doing something, you do it only when circumstance permit. When you're committed to something, you accept no excuses, only results."
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Source: — Sentence Correction |

by gmat_perfect » Fri Mar 25, 2011 5:43 pm
MAAJ wrote:"The daily newspaper"

According to MGMAT this is fine. But my first impression was that it was wrong 'cause I thought that "daily" was an adverb and thus could not modify newspaper.

For me it sounded like: The slowly car / The naturally smile

So... how do I determine if -ly forms are adverbs or adjectives? Are there other cases similar to this?
The word "daily" is both an adverb of time and an adjective.

So, it can play dual role.

adv. day by day, every day

adj. occurring every day

HTH
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by tetura84 » Fri Mar 25, 2011 6:52 pm
try to omit -ly part and see if the remaining word is meaningful or not.
In most cases, if it is meaningful, then it is an adverb.

daily -ly = dai = meaningless
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by MAAJ » Sat Mar 26, 2011 6:38 am
I haven't finished MGMAT SC guide but do you guys know if it mentions this topic somewhere?
"There's a difference between interest and commitment. When you're interested in doing something, you do it only when circumstance permit. When you're committed to something, you accept no excuses, only results."
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by Jim@Grockit » Mon Mar 28, 2011 7:23 am
Keep in mind that adjectives formed with a -ly suffix on nouns will look like this.

squirrelly
beastly

A decent test is whether the word to which -ly is added is a noun or an adjective. If it's an adjective root, the word with -ly is very unlikely to be an adjective itself (because . . . why modify a word with an adjective+ly when you could just use that adjective?).
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by MAAJ » Mon Mar 28, 2011 8:06 am
That makes a lot of sense, TY!
Jim@Grockit wrote:Keep in mind that adjectives formed with a -ly suffix on nouns will look like this.

squirrelly
beastly

A decent test is whether the word to which -ly is added is a noun or an adjective. If it's an adjective root, the word with -ly is very unlikely to be an adjective itself (because . . . why modify a word with an adjective+ly when you could just use that adjective?).
"There's a difference between interest and commitment. When you're interested in doing something, you do it only when circumstance permit. When you're committed to something, you accept no excuses, only results."
Join the discussion

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