By Expressions, Accusative

Many English nouns and noun phrases can be used as adverbs. They are called "adverbial objectives". From the standpoint of word order, an adverbial objective is put as if it were an objective of a verb, but actually it works as an adverbial modifier of the verb. This sort of constructs comes from...

Hello MrP History of English Gerunds (quoted from OED) The most notable development of the verbal nouns in form of -ing is its use as a gerund, i.e. a substantive with certain verbal functions, particularly those of being qualified by an adverb instead of an adjective, and of governing an...

Komountain san, could you allow me to throw my two cents worth about the second question? English has peculiar adverbial phrases called "adverbial accusatives". The adverbial accusatives come from Old English where nouns in accusative case were often used as adverbs. And they are still used in...