Sentence Correction

In the Foundations of Verbal, one of the drills is to determine whether the sentence has an error and to identify the adverb.

"The performer danced lively, delighting the children."

This was marked as an incorrect sentence, but all they explained was that "lively" was an adjective, not an adverb, so it cannot be correct. Why is "lively" not an adverb? Doesn't it describe danced which is a verb?

I was pretty sure your source made a mistake. I thought "lively" could be used not only as an adjective, but also as an adverb. Still, I presumed that whoever wrote the lesson you're studying looked into it so I did as well and I have conflicting results.

Dictionary.com lists the word as both an adjective and an adverb.

Meriam-Webster dictionary lists the word as an adjective, and notes that the corresponding adverb is livelily

Oxford Dictionary and Cambridge Dictionary pretty much agree with Meriam-Webster.

If I had been faced with this sentence on the exam, I would have found it correct and probably missed this question.

-Patrick

Thanks Patrick!