Submitted by Dyske on February 6, 2005
“I am home.” Does “home” function here as a noun or an adverb?
Persephone Imytholin (unregistered)
February 6, 2005, 10:27am
It functions as an adverb meaning 'at, to, or in the direction of home'. This also occurs in sentences like "I am going home".
• Report Abuse
February 12, 2005, 6:42am
At and to are not adverbs but prepositions.
It's a noun that looks like an adverb because you've dropped out 'now at' or 'here now at' from the sentence.
February 12, 2005, 8:29am
Um, no. The prepositional phrases 'at home', 'to home' and 'in the direction of home' are adjuncts, or things that modify the verb.
Home in 'I am home', 'Go home' or any equivalent construction is an adverb; like many other words, it does more than one job.
February 26, 2005, 7:03pm
As I frequently say, this is simply the case of a dropped preposition. "At" is implied, thus "home" is, indeed, a noun.
February 26, 2005, 11:23pm
There's no dispute that home is a noun, but it can still be an adverb. Statistically, words in English that act as only one part of speech are a rarity.
February 27, 2005, 1:20am
That is true. You can have entire phrases or even clauses function as an adverb (or so I was taught), as long as it modifies the verb and pertains to "how," "when," "where," and "to what extent." The following sentences with adverbial phrases and clauses are a few examples:
How: "Johnny answered his mother _in a nonchalant way._"When: "Sue didn't turn around _when I tapped her shoulder._"
"I am _[at] home._" definitely contains "home" as a noun, an object of the preposition, but also an adverb, since "at home" answers one of the adverb-identifying questions--"where?"
March 7, 2012, 4:05am
Great. I've been confused myself over this topic, and here I'm facing two different answers just again. But yeah, it helps, as long as we get the meaning I think it's fine either way :D
March 8, 2012, 9:51am
“'I am home.' Does 'home' function here as a noun or an adverb?"
Does it matter?
©2001-2014 CYCLE Interactive, LLC. All Rights Reserved. •
RSS Posts •