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What is a Word Qualifier?
By admin | November 23, 2009
by Maryn Langer
When you’re writing your first draft of anything, forget everything your English teachers ever told you. Creating is a right brain function and trying to make your article, story, etc. perfect the first time through is like plugging your ears to listen. Even though people who say they never re-write, rewrite. Their creative pattern is to write the sentence, paragraph, etc. and then keep massaging it. When they are happy with that sentence, they move to the next one and do the same thing. These writers are a small number of successful producers.
Most of us get an idea, sit down and pound out the points we want to make, let the work “cool”. Later, we come back to it and begin to shape it. It is during this shaping process that we expand the ideas, rearrange the order and structure of the paragraphs, and finally examine the sentences for grammar and appropriateness. It is only after these steps, do we look at each phrase and word. At this point you need to reach for Elizabeth Lyon’s Manuscript Makeover. At the very end of the polishing process in Chapter Fifteen, you will find what to do about qualifiers.
Qualifiers are words or phrases that precede an adjective or adverb, increasing or decreasing the quality signified by the word it modifies. Here are the most common qualifiers (though some of these words have other functions as well): very, quite, rather, somewhat, more, most, less, least, too, so, just, enough, indeed, still, almost, fairly, really, pretty, even, a bit, a little, a (whole) lot, a good deal, a great deal, kind of, sort of.
Examples and Observations:
Traditional grammarians usually classified qualifiers as adverbs of degree, and at first glance, judging on the basis of meaning and function, this seems reasonable.
Degree adverbs–like completely, absolutely, extremely, and excessively–can fit into the same position as the prototype, and they have similar meanings.
However, qualifiers are not true adverbs; they fail to fulfill several of the criteria for adverbs.
(1) Qualifiers do not modify verbs.
(2) With one or two exceptions, like really and fairly, qualifiers do not have adverb derivational suffixes.
“Good things don’t end in -eum; they end in -mania or -teria.”
(Homer Simpson, The Simpsons)
(3) Qualifiers cannot be made comparative or superlative.
(4) Qualifiers do not intensify.”
Qualifiers are not bad, but they need to be needed. The following are examples of the appropriate use of them.
“If people would dare to speak to one another unreservedly, there would be a good deal less sorrow in the world a hundred years hence.” (Samuel Butler)
“It’s pretty hard to be efficient without being obnoxious.”(Elbert Hubbard)
“In fact, death seems to have been a rather late invention in evolution. One can go a long way in evolution before encountering an authentic corpse.” (George Wald)
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