2

Adverbs of place and preposition - how are they used in sentences? Please clarify for me the following sentences...

1: My friend has sent a book at my home by bus yesterday.
2: My friend has sent a book by bus at my home yesterday.
3: My friend has sent a book at home tomorrow by bus.

Which of the sentences above are correct?

FumbleFingers
  • 70,966
  • 4
  • 97
  • 196
Meraj hussain
  • 131
  • 1
  • 9
  • 1
    You send something *to* somewhere, not *at, so they're all wrong because of that. And #3 is nonsensical because has sent* is Present Perfect (a form of "past" tense), but *tomorrow* is in the future. Also note that in most natural contexts it would be just Simple Past *sent. On average, we'd probably tend to specify adverbial "location" before "manner, mode", so #2 might be more common than #1, but both sequences are grammatically fine. Note that the third "adverbial" element yesterday* could also appear in other positions (in particular, as the *first* word). – FumbleFingers Oct 21 '16 at 12:28
  • Means Location to be placed before manner for example my friend has sent a book to home by bus yesterday. – Meraj hussain Oct 21 '16 at 12:57
  • Native speakers tend to observe something called the "Royal Order of Adjectives", but bear in mind that even that is nowhere near a "fixed" rule (and hardly any native speakers are consciously aware of it anyway; they're just reflecting what others say without thinking about it). To a limited extent there is a corresponding "Royal Order of Adverbs", but as you'll see from the link, that guy says "Manner" tends to come before "Place". Usage in this area is both complex and flexible, so you have much to learn, I'm afraid! – FumbleFingers Oct 21 '16 at 13:20
  • Note that My friend has sent a book to home by bus yesterday is also INVALID for all practical purposes. You could validly have *...sent a book home by bus...* or *sent a book to my home by bus..., but for reasons I can't easily summarise in a comment, you can't just send something to home*. – FumbleFingers Oct 21 '16 at 13:24
  • Thanks a lot for correspondence about adverb but in my santance, "by bus" is also manner so it should be come before place as ● my friend sent a book by bus to home yesterday. – Meraj hussain Oct 21 '16 at 16:45
  • To repeat, *to* is idiomatically unacceptable in send something to* home* (it would have to be either plain send it home or include some kind of determiner such as send it to my* home). But I really wouldn't waste time worrying about acceptable sequences* for multiple consecutive adverbial clauses - even native speakers have no clear idea of such things, and usually it will just come across as clumsy phrasing if you try to include too many such clauses, regardless of the order you use them. – FumbleFingers Oct 21 '16 at 17:07

1 Answers1

1

Since many English verbs change meaning depending on which particle follows them, it's a good idea to memorize the meaning and use of particle-verb pairs rather than just verbs alone. In this case the pair you want is "to send to". "To send at [something]" has a different meaning and is not as common.

He sent the book to my house

They will send the package to us by overnight express mail

As FumbleFingers mentions, there are some informal practices that determine the order of adverbs in a sentence. My personal preference is to pick the most important information first, and then the rest in decreasing order of importance. So with "send to", after stating the what, I would first state the where, then the how, when, why or other information.

So this:

He sent [the book] [to me] [by bus]

is more natural than this:

He sent [the book] [by bus] [to me]

Of course this all depends on the context.

Also, as mentioned in the comments, your use of "has sent" is incorrect. See this ELL question for more information on when and how to use the perfect tenses.

Side note: Send is a flexible verb that has varied meanings depending on which particle is used. Please look up the definitions of "send out", "send over", "send up", and "send off", all of which have meanings that you might not be able to intuit from other uses of "send".

Community
  • 1
Andrew
  • 88,266
  • 6
  • 98
  • 187
  • 1
    I think your most important information first is at least as relevant to sequence choice as the stuff in my link to "Royal Order of Adverbs". Mind you, sometimes we stand that on its head and put the most important clause *last* (depending on context, that could be the easiest place to add emphasis in speech, for example). But there's a real danger of ending up with clumsy phrasing with multiple adverbial clauses, whatever order they're given in. – FumbleFingers Oct 21 '16 at 17:11