Justin
Professional Teacher
"Greet politely and kindly the students" Why is this wrong? I know that it should be Politely and Kindly greet the students or Greet the students politely and kindly but I don't know grammatically why.
Feb 20, 2017 12:05 AM
Answers · 5
Hi Justin, You have asked a very interesting question. When we construct a sentence, we may be confused about the order of word classes in a sentence. Your sentence: "Greet politely and kindly the students" sounds unnatural to the native speaker. In my opinion, your main emphasis is on the act of greeting students. Therefore, it would be clearer to keep "Greet" and "students" together, and group the adverbs together behind to provide more information about the manner in which you greet them: Greet the students politely and kindly. Take another example: Board quickly the bus. vs Board the bus quickly. (The latter is very clear as you emphasise the type of vehicle you board. Quickly describes the manner in which you board.) I tried my best to provide my opinion. Do let me know if you still have doubts. Cheers, Lance
February 20, 2017
Adverbs can't go between a verb and its object. Another example: "I speak English well." English is the object, so you couldn't say "I speak well English."
February 20, 2017
Matthew's right - adverbs can go in several places in a sentence, but not between the verb and its object. Keep those two tightly together. Also, keep in mind that other languages don't have a problem with putting adverbs between the verb and object, which is why you might come across this error often. I call it "right information, wrong order".
February 20, 2017
Actually I think both of them are right but normally will use the second
February 20, 2017
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