What part of speech is 'quickly'...

[evelynevelyn]

… in the following sentence:

The sign board read: ‘Quickly!’.

Bonus question: where should I have put the question mark in my first post?

It’s an adverb, used clunkily.

Is it though? It doesn’t modify any verb.

Imperative verb?

I don’t think it can be an imperative verb, as it isn’t a verb.

I like the idea of ‘imperative adverb’, but:

i) the only Google hits I get for ‘imperative adverb’ are for languages other than English.

ii) as I’m not convinced it’s an adverb, I feel a bit cheap having my head turned by ‘imperative adverb’.

A quoted adverb, with whatever needs to be done quickly bring the implied verb?

It could be a noun. I have a friend with a cat whose name is “Slightly”. What if the sign is for a boat called “Quickly”?

Perhaps it is an adverb, modifying an implied and unspecified verb. (“[Act] Quickly!”).

Certainly an adverb doesn’t need to modify something in the same sentence:

“There he stood: Tall. Dark. Handsome”

I think we’d all count Tall, Dark and Handsome as adverbs despite the odd punctuation.

So maybe clunky adverb is right after all. A new term for the grammar books.

It’s an adverb. The rest of the sentence - please walk quickly - is missing.

Why don’t em dashes work on MN? Maybe it’s my iPad’s fault.

Tall, dark and handsome are adjectives.

Cross post with Rebecca — yes, I’m on team adverb now.

I agree it could also be a noun, though that needs some rather far-fetched scenario. Cheering on your cat from the stands.

its an adverb but its not clear what the verb is it is descriving- is it telling you to sit down quickly? go quickly? read quickly? - its just badly used

Tall , dark handsome- these are adjectives not adverbs- they describe a noun and not a verb.

Sorry yes, typo! I have surrendered my pedant card.

I meant something like:

There she ran. Quick. Silent. Deadly.

These are adjectives as they describe 'him'.

Ok — need to surrender my pendant card for a second time! (Before anyone points it out). Time for coffee.

Ooh no don’t. We’re all apprentice pedants, surely?

I think quick, silent and deadly are adjectives too. They modify “she” not “ran”.

☕️☕️

Yes, definitely adjectives! I managed to make the same stupid error six times in one thread. Surely a record…

Strange how strongly my mind defaulted to adjectives, even when I was specifically looking for examples of adverbs.

Isn't it like

Truly, Madly, Deeply

Ie adverb where the verb is just implied?

It's an adverb.

The construction as a whole is an imperative. Without the exclamation mark it wouldn't be a construction at all, simply a word. But the exclamation mark tells you that a verb is implied, so '[Go] quickly!'

That’s what I’ve come round to, but slightly reluctantly, as I think the fact it’s a quoted instruction does something odd to it, putting it at one remove from the sentence itself. (And the question was what part of speech is it in that sentence). But I can’t come up with any better answer than adverb.

I agree that

Truly, Madly, Deeply

are straightforwardly adverbs, of an implied verb.

It's the use of ellipsis here that creates confusion- 'missing' words from the sentence that are implied by the context, creating a fragment.

Interesting.

Without the exclamation mark, would you have still said it’s an adverb in that sentence? If not, what is it?

(Italics went in the wrong place)

@evelynevelyn

Quickly is always an adverb. There is nothing else it can be, except, if you're Shakespeare, a proper noun! (Mistress Quickly.)

But I think you're confusing the question 'what part of speech is it?' with 'what does the word mean in this context'? It wouldn't make sense to say 'the sign read "quickly"', no exclamation mark, without further context, e.g. '[the sign which was raised every morning to say either quickly or slowly today] read "quickly"'.

Single-word constructions are almost always imperatives (can anyone think of an exception?) in English.

Run!
Leave!
Jump!
Quiet!
Sit!

In this case the single word is also, itself, an imperative verb.

But in other cases a different part of speech can be used as an imperative, within a fixed context.

No!
Buster!
Quickly!