English Language & Usage Asked by Sebastian Perez on February 26, 2021
I wanted to ask a question about the adverbs away and apart.
The villages are miles apart.
The exam is only two weeks away.
It is three days apart.
It is five kilometers away/apart.
Away and apart are supposed to be adverbs right? So they must be modifying either adjectives, adverbs, or verbs — right?
What do they modify in these examples?
FIrst example, miles apart: does apart modify miles (which is a noun)?
Same thing goes for away, like two weeks away. Two weeks is a noun.
Some call away and apart adverbs. They can be adverbs, but they don't always work that way, and they have different meanings and grammar.
All the examples of away and apart in the Original Question occur in measure phrases -- miles apart, two weeks away, three days apart, etc. These phrases involve a quantifier, either overt like two or understood like (several) days, and a quantity like distance, time, weight, and optionally (as here) something that indicates specifics about the quantity that is being measured.
This something extra can be away, which means away from some zero point like now or here, and refers to the distance to be covered or the time to be expended (or the fare money to be collected, as in Chicago is $18 away) in traveling to a place. Away is asymmetric -- it only goes in one direction:
This extra thing can also be apart (as well as long, wide, tall, old, and many more). Apart comes from part and it is used to refer to things that occur together, as in the idioms come apart, rip apart, fall apart, etc.
In a measure phrase, apart requires a plural referent:
As for what modifies what, don't worry about it.
The definition of adverbs they gave you is full of holes.
Answered by John Lawler on February 26, 2021
Actually, they aren't adverbs—despite what you might read in a dictionary.
There are a number of clues here:
One atypical property they have is that they don't occur before noun phrases. This is because they are intransitive prepositions.
In the Original Poster's examples they do not modify anything—and, indeed, this is an important point. It's because they are Locative Complements of the verb BE, and not Modifiers, that we know they are not adverbs.
For more information about intransitive pepositions, see either of the following:
The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language, Rodney Huddleston & Geoffrey Pullum, 2002.
Oxford Modern English Grammar, Bas Aarts, 2014.
Answered by Araucaria - Not here any more. on February 26, 2021
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