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Placement of words

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by aspirant2011 » Fri Aug 26, 2011 6:50 am
mastak.kaur wrote:So I found this problem on concision in Manhattan Sentence correction book. I had to rewrite the following sentence more concisely:

It was with haste that the senator read her speech

The correct answer is The senator read her speeech hastily. Why can't it be The senetor hastily read her speech?

Thank you
hastily is an adverb and so should modify either adjective or noun but over here read is a verb and therefore, placement of hastily is wrong when put ahead of verb read as hastily is basically describing the word speech i.e what the senator hastily read........

I hope I am clear
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by Gvocram » Mon Jan 28, 2013 7:05 pm
or, hastily, the senator read her speech.. right? Since its modifying the noun, the senator.
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by Tommy Wallach » Tue Jan 29, 2013 12:41 pm
Hey Guys,

I would argue that--Hastily, the senator read her speech--is wrong. Hastily is modifying the verb, and because it isn't a full phrase (deserving separation with a comma: "In the beginning, there was nothing."), there's no reason to write it like this.

However, I don't know what our books say, but I see no problem with either:

The senator read her speech hastily

OR

The senator hastily read her speech.

Hope that helps!

-t
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by ceilidh.erickson » Tue Jan 29, 2013 1:10 pm
To expand upon what Tommy says... adverbs are uniquely flexible in English - they can be correctly placed before the verb, after the verb, or after the entire clause. The following are all equally correct:

The senator hastily read her speech.

The senator read hastily her speech. (correct, but awkward to split up the verb and object here)

The senator read her speech hastily.

I'm not sure why our book didn't include other possible correct answers, but never fear - you're correct!
Ceilidh Erickson
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Harvard Graduate School of Education
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