Just as an adverb

Question

"Just the sight of her made me crazy".Can anyone explain why "just" is to be regarded as an adverb in the above sentence whereas "only" in  "Only journalists were allowed entry" is regarded as an adjective according to all dictionaries ?

Anonymous · Accepted Answer

In the sentence, "Just the sight of her made me crazy.", the group of words, "Just the sight of her", is the enitre subject of the sentence. In this group of words, "sight" is the main noun - essentially the subject - and the other words are modifiers of various things. "The" modifies "sight," "of her" also modifies "sight." What then does "just" modify? It can't modify "sight" since the adjectival definitions of "sight" don't quite fit here. Thus, it must modify "the" and/or "of her," which are both adjectives, and a word that modifies and adj. is an adv. So "just" is an adv. here. So the meaning is something like, "Exactly the of her sight made me crazy."

In the sentence, "Only journalists were allowed entry.", the group of words, "Only journalists", is the subject. Here the word "journalists" is clearly a noun, and so "Only" can only modify "journalists" and a word that modifies a noun is an adj., so here "only" is an adj.

You might be thinking that you could also say "Just journalists were allowed entry.", which would mean the same thing, and "just" is an adj. here, and so why is "Just" not an adj. in the first sentence, "Just the sight of here..." But in the first sentence you can't subsitute "only" for "just," "Only the sight of her...", because then the sentence does not mean the same thing. Here the sentence means "The sight of her and her alone made me crazy.", which is not what the original sentence means.

Just as an adverb

Top answer

Get the Weekly English Kit 📬

Related Questions