adverb or adjective

Question

His jokes fell flat.  We are flying direct.  Could anybody explain to me why flat is an adjective in the first sentence and direct is an adverb in the second, please.

Inchoateknowledge · Accepted Answer

I have an idea:

fall flat is an idiom like throw open in I threw open the windows.

Feathers · Answer

Hi IK

InchoateknowledgeI have an idea:
fall flat is an idiom like throw open in I threw open the windows.

I don't think so... (I don't know.)

His jokes fell flat.
We are flying direct.

I think this "flat" in the first sentence is an adjective, and a subject complement. (And only noun and adjective equivalents can be a complement.)

"Direct" in the second sentence is not a subject complement.

BarbaraPA · Answer

Yes, "fall flat" is an idiom used to mean something was not well received. A person can fall "flat on his face" - and in that case, it's a little more literal and it would be an adverb phrase (how did he fall?). But jokes, in particular, fall flat.

Flying direct would mean that you are flying a direct route. I don't know that I've ever used that phrasing. I have a direct flight, or I am flying directly there sounds more natural to me.

Anonymous · Answer

As Grammar Geek says, these are adverbs.

This is from Merriam-Webster's Concise Dictionary of English Usage:

flat adverb A flat adverb is an adverb that has the same form as its related adjective: fast in "drive fast," slow in "go slow," sure in "you sure fooled me, " bright in "the moon is shining bright," flat in "she turned me down flat," hard and right in "he hit the ball hard but right at the shortstop." Flat adverbs have been a problem for grammarians and schoolmasters for a couple of centuries now, and more recently usage writers have continued to wrestle with them.

Flat adverbs were more abundant and used in greater variety formerly than they are now. They were used then as ordinary adverbs and as intensifiers:

... commanding him incontinent to avoid out of his realm and to make no war - Lord Berners, translation of Froissart's Chronicles, 1523

... Iwas horrid angry, and would not go - Samuel Pepys, diary, 29 May
1667

... the weather was so violent hot - Daniel Defoe, Robinson Crusoe, 119

... the five ladies were monstrous fine - Jonathan Swift, Journal to Stella, 6 Feb. 1712

... I will not be extreme bitter - William Wycherly, The Country Wife, 1675

You would be hard pressed to find modern examples of these particular uses.

Originally such adverbs had not been identical with adjectives; they had been marked by case endings, but over the course of Middle English the endings disappeared. The 18th-century grammarians, such as Lowth 1762, explain how these words were adverbs. They saw them as
adjectives, and they considered it a grammatical mistake to use an adjective for an adverb. They preferred adverbs ending in -ly.

Two centuries of chipping away by schoolmasters and grammarians has reduced the number of flat adverbs in common use and has lowered the status of quite a few others. Many continue in standard use, but most of them compete with an -ly form. Bernstein 1971, for instance, list such pairs as bad, badly; bright, brightly; close, closely; fair, fairly; hard, hardly; loud, loudly; right, rightly; sharp, sharply; tight, tightly. Many of these pairs have become differentiated, and now the flat adverb fits in some expressions while the -ly adverb goes in others. And a few flat adverbs - fast and soon, for instance - have managed to survive as the only choice.

Feathers · Answer

AlienvoordAs Grammar Geek says, these are adverbs.

Hi Alienvoord, I have a question, 'cause I took that "flat" as an adjective. So when I read GG's post,

Grammar GeekA person can fall "flat on his face" - and in that case, it's a little more literal and it would be an adverb phrase (how did he fall?).

... I put a stress on in that case.

Let me make sure: "flat" in "His jokes fell flat" is an adverb?

Anonymous · Answer

I think it is, yes.

But it's also an idiom. We can't replace "flat" here with another adverb. We can say "He fell flat on his face" or "He fell clumsily" but we do not say "The joke fell clumsily."

Inchoateknowledge · Answer

Hi,

I took these examples from my grammar book.
It says flat is an adjective in the first sentence, while direct is an adverb.

"He fell flat on his face" here 'flat' is an adverb because it adds info about the verb.
By the way, we cannot say flat is an adverb or an adjective.
What syntactical role it plays only comes down to in what context it occurs.

Anonymous · Answer

Thats' right, IK, "flat" can function as both and adverb and an adjective. We can tell which one it is by its distribution.

The countertop is flat.
The countertop is white.

We can replace it with an adjective, so it's an adjective here.

He fell flat on his face.
He fell clumsily.

We can replace it with an adverb, so it's an adverb here. For that reason, I think "flat" in "the joke fell flat" is also an adverb.

CalifJim · Answer

Could anybody explain to me why flat is an adjective in the first sentence and direct is an adverb in the second, please.

The jokes were flat. flat describes jokes. flat tells what kind of jokes they were. They were flat jokes.
You may be thinking that flat describes how the jokes fell, but the verb fall is not being used literally here. The idea is that the jokes seemed to be flat jokes; they struck the audience ("fell upon the audience") as flat jokes.
direct describes how we are flying. It answers the question how, not the question what kind of, certainly not what kind of we!

CJ

Anonymous · Answer

... but I could be wrong. (insert smiley)

adverb or adjective

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