# unabated or unabatedly



## gil12345

Hi there, 

I have a sentence from Longman Dictionary which goes like this:

*The flood of refugees continued unabated.*

How am I supposed to understand it?

I mean, continue is the main verb while "unabated" is an adjective. 

How come an adjective modifies a verb?

Can I say

*The flood of refugees continued unabatedly?

*Thanks

Gil


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## boozer

The flood continued. It was unabated. You need an adjective to modify 'the flood'. In fact, 'unabatedly' sounds wrong to me anyhow.


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## Cagey

_"Unabated"_ describes the flood. That is why it is an adjective.  

Here, I wouldn't use the adverb.  I don't much like _"continued unabatedly"_. 
(In another sentence you might be able to do either one: adjective to modify the subject or an adverb to modify the verb.)

_Cross-posted. _


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## perpend

1)
The unabated flood of refugees continued.
The flood of refugees continued unabatedly.

2)
The without-end flood of refugees continued.
The flood of refugees continued without end.

It's arguable what "unabated" or "without end" refers to, in my opinion.


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## boozer

You have really made me think, insofar as I am at all capable of that. 

I have never, ever, heard 'unabatedly'. The BNC produces the unambiguous number of 0 (zero, freezing point  ) results. The Cambridge online dictionary does not list 'unabatedly'. Our WR dictionary doesn't either.

As far as I am concerned, 'unabatedly' remains a non-entity.  An understandable non-entity, but still a non-entity...


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## perpend

Adverbs have their own lives, boozer.


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## Loob

I'm finding it extremely hard to think of a situation in which I'd use "unabatedly".  I definitely wouldn't use it in the sentence in post 1.


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## perpend

Okay, let's use "rash"

The flood of refugees continued rash/rashly.

What you do guys think, boozer and Loob?


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## PaulQ

The OED does admit *unabatedly *as an adverb (only 2 examples) but not *abatedly*. The adjectival examples of "unabated" all clearly qualify a following noun. 

I think we should understand *The flood of refugees continued unabated. *as *The flood of refugees continued to be unabated.*


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## boozer

I don't know, Perpend. It seems to me that 'rashly' can and must describe the manner in which something 'continues'. In your example I personally would not accept 'rash'. 'Unabatedly' perturbs me profoundly for some reason - call it fear of the unknown.


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## perpend

Maybe "unabatedly" perturbs you "unknowingly". 

Gosh, there's a time and a place for every adverb under the sun.

I think "unabatedly" exists. If it doesn't in this context, then I take my comments back.


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## wandle

'Continued unabated' tells us that the flood was unabated.

'Continued unabatedly' would mean not that the flood was unabated, but that the continuance was unabated.
That does not make sense, because until the word 'continued' is used, the continuance was not part of the picture. 

The flood had a beginning. Nothing can continue unless it had a beginning first.
That beginning is not the same as its continuance.

Whatever is unabated had to be there before it continued to be there. That element is the flood, not the continuance.


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## gil12345

PaulQ said:


> The OED does admit *unabatedly *as an adverb (only 2 examples) but not *abatedly*. The adjectival examples of "unabated" all clearly qualify a following noun.
> 
> I think we should understand *The flood of refugees continued unabated. *as *The flood of refugees continued to be unabated.*




Thank you all, especially PaulQ. 

If "unabated" modifies the subject, why don't we put it before the noun?

Encarta does show "unabatedly" as an adv.


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## Edinburgher

In another thread I saw here recently (sorry I can't remember which one or what its main purport was), it was pointed out that in the old days (say in Shakespeare's time or earlier) it had not yet been the custom to mark adverbs with -ly.  People were expected to tell the difference between adjectives and adverbs purely from context, not by the absence or presence of the suffix.

I think that "unabated" could well be a surviving example of this, and that in this instance it is not an adjective.  Despite lacking -ly, it's an adverb modifying "continues".  I almost see "to continue unabated" as an idiom.


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## boozer

An interesting theory, Edniburgher. 

I think, however, that Wandle has made some good points and I agree with him about the logical inconvenience of 'unabated' describing the manner in which the flood continues. 

I don't know if this is relevant, but the Cambridge dictionary qualifies the word as an _adjective (usually after verb)_. Well, this is the case here...
http://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/british/unabated?q=unabated


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## perpend

"unabated" for me in the OP's sentence modifies "continues".

Add an "-ly" or not, it (unabated(ly) adds emphasis to "continue" for me. Thus, an adverb.

"Flood" is a noun in the OP.


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## wandle

> The flood of refugees continued unabated.


'Unabated' is a predicative adjective here. The usage is equivalent to 'The water ran cold' or 'The joke fell flat' or 'He painted the fence white'. A predicative adjective is an adjective which has some adverbial force.

The only thing that can be unabated is the flood, because 'unabated' means 'without reduction'. Whatever is unabated must have existed already before there could be any question whether it was reduced or not. The continuance did not previously exist before the question of abatement arose: only the flood did.


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## Edinburgher

wandle said:
			
		

> The only thing that can be unabated is the flood, because 'unabated' means 'without reduction'. Whatever is unabated must have existed already before there could be any question whether it was reduced or not. The continuance did not previously exist before the question of abatement arose: only the flood did.


  It is indeed the flood that is showing no signs of abating, not the continuance, but that doesn't make 'unabated' an adjective.

If 'unabated' means 'without reduction', then 'the flood continued unabated' means 'the flood continued without reduction'.  In turn, that means the flood continued in an unreducing manner.   The phrase 'without reduction' looks convincingly adverbial to me, it tells us how the flood continued, namely without abating.  If 'without reduction' is an adverbial phrase, then its one-word equivalent, 'unabated', must be an adverb.

Compare:  'The rescuers worked tirelessly.'  Clearly the working cannot tire, only the rescuers can; they worked without tiring, or in a tireless manner, so 'without tiring' is an adverbial phrase telling us how the rescuers worked, and so 'tirelessly' is an adverb.  Same type of situation.


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## wandle

Edinburgher said:


> Compare:  'The rescuers worked tirelessly.'


I am afraid this is not a valid comparison, precisely because 'tirelessly' is an adverb, whereas 'unabated' is an adjective.


wandle said:


> The only thing that can be unabated is the flood, because 'unabated' means 'without reduction'.


Here I was making a separate argument: 'without reduction' is there to express the semantic meaning, not the grammatical function, though I intended it as an adjectival phrase, comparable to 'without compare', 'a rose without a thorn' etc.
I could have said 'unreduced', had I anticipated *Edinburgher's* reaction.

I still maintain that 'unabated' is a predicative adjective (in fact, a classic example) and that:


wandle said:


> A predicative adjective is an adjective which has some adverbial force.


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## e2efour

I don't think there's any doubt about it being a predicative adjective.
You can argue about its function (why I don't understand since the OED and other dictionaries give unabatedly as the adverb), but I agree that it "has some adverbial force".


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## perpend

1) The flood of refugees was unabated.
2) The flood of refugees continued unabated.

I know it's just me, but in 1) (with "was"), "unabated" does appear to me to indeed be a predicative adjective, but I perceive that in 2) (the OP's sentence, with "continued"), the "unabated" is an adverb, and I'd use the (-ly) version.

And, I maybe be wrong, but I perceive that in 2), "continued" is being modified.


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## boozer

'Continue' is one of those verbs that can be both active and linking. It is said here:
http://www.btb.termiumplus.gc.ca/tpv2guides/guides/hyper/index-fra.html?lang=fra&page=link.html
As you know, a linking verb links the subject to its complement. A subject complement can be, and often is, an adjective. 
He grew pale. = He _was_ pale. 
The tree stood black against the morning sky. = The tree _was_ black...
The flood continued unabated... = The flood _was_ unabated...


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## perpend

No, boozer, that restricts my interpretation of what is happening, when it's occurring.

Gosh, your post continued this thread unabashedly.

Ha! (That is acceptable in New-Speak).


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## Loob

boozer said:


> 'Continue' is one of those verbs that can be both active and linking. It is said here:
> http://www.btb.termiumplus.gc.ca/tpv2guides/guides/hyper/index-fra.html?lang=fra&page=link.html
> As you know, a linking verb links the subject to its complement. A subject complement can be, and often is, an adjective.
> He grew pale. = He _was_ pale.
> The tree stood black against the morning sky. = The tree _was_ black...
> The flood continued unabated... = The flood _was_ unabated...


That's how I see it too, boozer.


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## wandle

With due respect, it seems to me that this new line of interpretation, treating 'unabated' as a complement of a linking verb, is making the opposite mistake from the earlier one, treating 'unabated' as if it were the adverb 'unabatedly'.

The earlier line treated it as if it were adverbial only and denied that it was an adjective at all. 
The latest line treats it as if were purely adjectival and had no adverbial force at all.

The truth lies between. The essence of the predicative use of an adjective is that while the word retains its adjectival status it nevertheless performs something of an adverbial role.


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## perpend

For me, the operative verb in a sentence has to be "to be", or pretty close to it, for predicative usage, adjectivally.


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## boozer

wandle said:


> The earlier line treated it as if it were adverbial only and denied that it was an adjective at all. The latest line treats it as if were purely adjectival and had no adverbial force at all.


I speak for myself only. With due respect, I maintained all along that it was an adjective and never said it had any adverbial force. In fact, I was under the impression that you agreed with that.  Never mind - I still go with the definition given in the Cambridge dictionary which I linked to in an earlier post - it is an adjective used after a verb. The verb 'continue' is, in my humble opinion, a linking verb here. Speaking of which, how much of the meaning would be lost if we used the most typical linking verb 'to be' in this sentence? The flood was unabated - the very word 'unabated' suggests continuation so 'continued' does not really add a lot here. No meaning is lost for me in this particular example.


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## wandle

By definition, any adjective in the predicate is a predicative adjective. The verb does not have to be a linking verb (for example, as mentioned earlier: _'He painted the fence white'_).
If the adjective is in the predicate instead of being in the attributive position, then it must be expressing some element of meaning that is dependent upon the verb. In other words, it has some adverbial force.


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## boozer

wandle said:


> If the adjective is in the predicate instead of being in the attributive position, then it must be expressing some element of meaning that is dependent upon the verb..


In my interpretation there is:

 a subject phrase
_the flood of refugees
_
a linking verb
_continued = (well, more or less) was
_
and a subject complement with no adverbial force:
_unabated
_
I think we will have to agree to disagree on this one, though I enjoy the discussion.


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## perpend

Let's say, as a woman:

My period continued unabatedly.

Does it mean that:
1) My period continued without end.
2) My period continued endlessly.

Is "endlessly" an adverb?


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## wandle

To me, post 29 effectively removes the semantic meaning of 'continued', treating it as a link and no more.

On the contrary, the verb introduces a new fact, continuance, and continuance of a character which has unabatedness as a consequence: that is how I see the adverbial force of the adjective.


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## boozer

For something that is unabated, how is continuance a new fact? Can anything be unabated without continuing?


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## perpend

boozer said:


> Can anything be unabated without continuing?



That's the crux as well as the money-question. Well-written, Boozer.


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## wandle

boozer said:


> For something that is unabated, how is continuance a new fact?


The continuance is a new fact, because the verb 'continued' presents it as new information.
The adjective 'unabated' does not appear until after the verb 'continued'.

The verb and the adjective each bring a piece of fresh information to the table.
It would be perfectly good English to say _'The flood continued, though greatly diminished'_.
_'The flood, which had only just started, was abruptly halted by the intervention of the military'_ is another perfectly possible sentence. 
Each of these examples of course expresses a different factual picture from that of the original sentence: this shows that the semantic meaning of the original is an essential part of the message.


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## boozer

wandle said:


> The continuance is a new fact, because the verb 'continued' presents it as new information.
> The adjective 'unabated' does not appear until after the verb 'continued'.


Agreed. So let's see the new information and at what stages it is presented to us:
Stage one: continued = went on
Stage two: unabated = went on (but we knew that already, didn't we?) with undiminished force/intensity/strength

As we can see, stage 2 contains all the information this sentence communicates to us anyway. 

_1. The flood of refugees was unabated. 
2. The flood of refugees continued unabated._ 

It would be, therefore, correct to say that sentence 1 above contains all the information that sentence 2 contains. However, while sentence 2 presents this information to us in stages, sentence 1 does so in one go. 

And because they mean essentially the same it should be obvious that 'continued' is a link verb that does not contribute much, if any, meaning to the whole.


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## wandle

If you really mean there is no difference between 'to be' and 'to continue', I am afraid nothing that I can say will help.


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## boozer

wandle said:


> If you really mean there is no difference between 'to be' and 'to continue', I am afraid nothing that I can say will help.


Indeed, if you don't see that the two sentences in post 35 convey the same meaning with or without _continue _(which is a linking verb here), nothing more that I say will make any difference. 

With respect, we agree to disagree.


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## lucas-sp

boozer said:


> Stage one: continued = went on
> Stage two: unabated = went on (but we knew that already, didn't we?) with undiminished force/intensity/strength


I think that's basically the problem here. It's very hard to analyze the sentence because we know that both the "flood (of refugees)" and the act of "continuing" are equally "unabated," by the logic of the sentence.

When I saw the thread I immediately thought of _The Importance of Being Earnest_, and of Cecily's diary:





> 'To-day I broke off my engagement with Ernest. I feel it is better to do so. The weather still continues charming.' (available here)


From that, it would appear that "continue" is indeed a linking verb, because the weather, and not the continuing, is charming. I suspect the same logic is at play in the flood of refugees.

To say that "continue" is a linking verb is not to say that "continue" means the same thing as "be." When we use "continue" in place of "be," we give a lot of precise information about the _modality_ of being that we are describing. So if the weather "continues charming," then not only _is_ the weather charming, but it _has been charming_ for a while, and there _have not been any breaks in its being charming_​.


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## perpend

boozer said:


> Indeed, if you don't see that the two sentences in post 35 convey the same meaning with or without _continue _(which is a linking verb here), nothing more that I say will make any difference.
> 
> With respect, we agree to disagree.



The two sentences in #35 do not mean the same thing for me, boozer. Sorry to say.  They are different tenses for me.


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## boozer

perpend said:


> The two sentences in #35 do not mean the same thing for me, boozer. Sorry to say.  They are different tenses for me.


They are?  Ah the verb tenses are the same...

Well, I agree that they say what they say in different ways but they contain the same information for me. Besides, I will not die arguing about the meaning of 'to be' and 'to continue'. A verb does not have to mean exactly the same as 'to be' in order to be seen as a linking verb. It is maybe a coincidence that much of the time sentences containing linking verbs can mean more or less the same with a simple 'to be' instead. For example:
I feel sorry. - I am sorry.
The cake tasted good. - The cake was good.

Of course, a verb different from 'to be' is bound to convey more information but it also carries the meaning of 'to be'. That's what makes it a linking verb really. It is just a coincidence that in our example here the additional information carried by 'continue' is quite adequately provided by the adjective 'unabated' (because, as already pointed out, the flood cannot be unabated without continuing)


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## perpend

Hmmm ... okay, we can agree to disagree too. The introduction of "continued" changes the game, in my humble opinion for the actual "tense".

I don't mean a "main tense" but rather a "sub-tense".

Whether they contain the same information is subject to what the writer intended.


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## wandle

boozer said:


> the additional information carried by 'continue' is quite adequately provided by the adjective 'unabated' (because, as already pointed out, the flood cannot be unabated without continuing)


This amounts to saying that 'The flood was unabated' means the same as 'The flood continued unabated'!
We are still in the realm here of " 'to be' is the same as 'to continue' ".


> sentences containing linking verbs can mean more or less the same with a simple 'to be' instead. For example:
> I feel sorry. - I am sorry.
> The cake tasted good. - The cake was good.


If this were true, then the sentence _'The cake tasted good, but it actually contained poison'_ would be grammatically incorrect.

In any case, the question whether 'continue' is a linking verb is a red herring, because it is not only linking verbs that take predicative adjectives. 

At the risk of repeating my earlier example, in the sentence _'He painted the fence white'_, 'white' is a predicative adjective, but 'painted' is not a linking verb.


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## wandle

lucas-sp said:


> To say that "continue" is a linking verb is not to say that "continue" means the same thing as "be."


Absolutely right.


> if the weather "continues charming," then not only _is_ the weather charming, but it _has been charming_ for a while, and there _have not been any breaks in its being charming_​.


This gives the semantic meaning for the Wilde quotation _'The weather still continues charming'_, but there it is the word 'still' which tells us that there has been a preceding spell of continued charming weather. The word 'continues' on its own does not say that.

It is not the case that we can use the word 'continue' only if there has been prior continuance. There must be (conceptually at least) a point where the word 'continue' first becomes applicable. Prior to that point, something was only starting. After that, it was continuing. 

If this were not true, we could not use the concept of starting at all. Everything would be in a permanent state of continuance. In that case, it _would_ be true to say that 'to be' equals 'to continue'!


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## Thomas Tompion

I'd find this easier to understand if the people who maintain that *it continued unabated* is not a pleonasm would explain clearly why.


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## boozer

wandle said:


> This amounts to saying that 'The flood was unabated' means the same as 'The flood continued unabated'!
> We are still in the realm here of " 'to be' is the same as 'to continue' ".


No, I am not in that realm.  Then, I've already heard at least 4-5-6 times 'they don't mean the same'. What I have not seen so far is a reasonable analysis pointing out the ways in which those two sentences differ - what information is contained in one that is missing in the other...

As far as I know, linking verbs connect subjects to their complements. The 'painting' example is irrelevant because, as you say, 'paint' is not a linking verb. There is definite causality in it that is absent in 'continue'. In 'paint' one causes the fence to be white. How is that relevant in the case of 'continue'? Maybe the flood causes itself to be 'unabated'? Unlikely.

But fine, I have at least shown dictionary definitions and linked to grammar websites to support my views, which means that there are grammarians that are of the same opinion as me. So far you have given an example that I find irrelevant. I thought we had agreed to disagree.


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## wandle

Thomas Tompion said:


> I'd find this easier to understand if the people who maintain that *it continued unabated* is not a pleonasm would explain clearly why.


I hope I explained this in post 34 where I gave the example _'The flood continued, though greatly diminished'_.


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## wandle

boozer said:


> The 'painting' example is irrelevant because, as you say, 'paint' is not a linking verb. There is definite causality in it that is absent in 'continue'. In 'paint' one causes the fence to be white. How is that relevant in the case of 'continue'?


Well, at the risk of reverting to the thread topic:


gil12345 said:


> *The flood of refugees continued unabated.*
> How am I supposed to understand it?
> I mean, continue is the main verb while "unabated" is an adjective.
> How come an adjective modifies a verb?


some people in answer to this have said that 'unabated' is an adverb.
My answer is that it is a predicative adjective, which has some adverbial force.

The point of the example _'He painted the fence white'_ is twofold.
First, it is an illustration, along with the others I have given, of an adjective used predicatively.
Secondly, it shows that the question, "Is 'continue' a linking verb?" is not relevant here.
That question is irrelevant because it is not only linking verbs that take predicative adjectives.


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## Thomas Tompion

gil12345 said:


> Hi there,
> 
> I have a sentence from Longman Dictionary which goes like this:
> 
> *The flood of refugees continued unabated.*
> 
> How am I supposed to understand it?
> 
> I mean, continue is the main verb while "unabated" is an adjective.
> 
> How come an adjective modifies a verb?
> 
> Can I say
> 
> *The flood of refugees continued unabatedly?
> 
> *Thanks
> 
> Gil


No, you can't Gil.

But you can say* Unabated, the flood of refugees continued* or* The flood of refugees was unabated.*


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## e2efour

Why not? If we accept the adverb (as does the OED) what is strange about "provocations from both sides continued unabatedly"? (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_War_of_Kappel)
On the other hand, _unabated_ here would also be an adjective.


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## Thomas Tompion

I just find it unpalatable, E24, but then I found unpalatable many things which I've now come to accept, and even use.


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## e2efour

I had never heard of unabatedly before, Thomas, and I don't intend to use it either!


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## boozer

wandle said:


> My answer is that it is a predicative adjective, which has some adverbial force.


And I still say that this is inaccurate and presented to us in vague terms in order to make it sound less contestable. In the spirit of calling a spade a spade, a word that has "some adverbial force" is bound to be recorded somewhere by someone as an adverb. Lexicographers do that all the time. I am prepared to accept _unabated _having 'some adverbial force' if any dictionary has recorded it as an adverb. Otherwise I would assume that its 'adverbial force' is based on someone's illusory feeling. 

It has already been demonstrated that 'unabatedly' is an established adverb. One that I personally do not use, but I accept its existence. Is the same true of 'unabated'?

And this goes back to the initial question - is 'unabated' an adjective or an adverb?

It is an adjective and it does not modify the verb 'continue' in any manner.


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## drdiabetes

When I was young, many years ago, we were taught that such words, when adjectives, were called ADVERBIAL OBJECTIVES, which go after the noun or pronoun:
I painted the mailbox blue.
The flood continued unabated.
He made me mad.

As adverbial objectives, they indicate how or why or for what purpose or with what result the verb action is performed.

When the word is an adverb, it modifies the verb or another adjective or adverb:
The flood continued unabatedly.
He eats rapidly.
His answers were highly suspect.

Unabated is a word I use on occasion.  It means "failing to stop or diminish."  "The flood continued (how?) unabated."  =  The flood is undiminished.
Abated is the antonym: "The rain abated after we had holed up in the stench of the rotting log cabin for over an hour."  = The rain stopped.
"Unabatedly" in the original sentence of this post is overkill.  An adverbial form is not needed to describe the flood, only the action.  But the end-state of the action (unabated) is sufficient to describe the flood as an adjective placed after the noun.

The sentence I am using it in tonight (and the reason I came to WR was to look for a synonym) is:
"The modifications of the event's form, vocabulary, and procedures have continued unabated from 2009 to the present."



Confusing...I regret to say.  But that is my understanding of this word and its use in Southern US English.


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## wandle

It is worth pointing out that 'abate' means 'diminish': it does not mean 'stop'.
A flood may well continue, even though abated.

The opposite case to this is that it continues unabated. To say 'The flood was unabated' does not express the idea of continuance. By the same token, 'The flood was abated' does not express the idea of cessation. Either sentence could refer simply to a moment of time during a flood, whereas continuance implies duration. A flood might be unabated for a moment and continue abated thereafter.

As far as I am aware, an adverbial objective is a noun or noun phrase used adverbially, as in 'The flood continued three days and three nights'.

Nouns can be used not only adverbially, but also adjectivally, as in 'a midnight swim'. In view of this flexibility, it should not be too great a surprise to find that adjectives can be used with adverbial force.

Grammar and the classification of words and their functions is an attempt to place a clear descriptive scheme on language: which is a living, flexible thing and which tends to be more subtle and varied than our classifications can well express.

If we reject the notion of an adjective with adverbial force, I suspect the result may be a scheme which is less consistent, not more.


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## lucas-sp

I think the confusion lies in the fact that "unabated" gives information pertinent to the verb. As a consequence, it seems that it must be adverbial. But this isn't the case:





> The bright light glowed in the dark room.


"Bright" tells us how the light "glowed," but it does not itself _modify_ "glowed." (This, to me, is what wandle understands by "adverbial force": an adjective can have a logical and semantic bearing on the meaning of the verb; however, I don't think that means that an adjective must become an adverb.) I think the same thing happens with:





> We continued undaunted.


_We_ are undaunted, not our continuing. It's debatable whether this means "We continued to be undaunted" or "We continued and we were undaunted" or a little bit of both. But "undaunted," even though sitting where an adverb would be, is actually an adjective. 

The same seems true to me with:





> The flood of refugees continued unabated.


"Unabated" doesn't mean "without stopping," so there's no pleonasm with "continued." "Unabated" means "without any reduction in size or intensity." The meaning is "The flood of refugees continued, and the number of refugees pouring into the country did not get any lower." This word thus tells us something about the modality of the verb "continued," but that doesn't mean that the word is any less an adjective.

Or does it? We're in lexicographically murky waters here. OED gives no such "adverbjectival" use of "unabated" in its examples; the only examples they give of "unabated" involve it being used explicitly to modify nouns. It does give a verb-adjacted use of "unabatedly":





> 1828   T. Carlyle _Crit. & Misc. Ess._ (1857) I. 132   They chaunting unabatedly her extreme deficiency in personal charms.
> 1898   _Westm. Gaz._ 27 July 5/1   The war would be carried on unabatedly until something more tangible in the way of terms was proposed.


The last example seems very pertinent. OED is suggesting that our confusion about "continued unabated" might be due to the fact that we're using an adjective form mistakenly, in the place of an adverb. So over time "unabated" will emerge as both an adjective and an adverb. Or maybe it already is...


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## wandle

A relevant example for the adjective 'bright' having some adverbial force is not 'The bright light shone', but 'The light shone bright'. This is distinct in meaning.
'Bright' in this case, like 'unabated' in the original example, expresses the result of the verbal action.

The same applies to painting the fence white (or the town red), with the difference that in the latter two cases the verb is transitive instead of intransitive.


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## Ivan_I

_the storm was raging unabated
or
the storm was raging unabatedly
???_


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## Barque

I prefer the first. I can't explain why, other than that it sounds more natural to me.


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## lingobingo

To *continue unabated* is an idiomatic construction. No one I’ve ever met would use “unabatedly” instead. It works with any appropriate verb, but is mostly expressed in the simple aspect. However, “was raging unabated” is fine.

Of the 83 instances of *unabated* in the British National Corpus, the vast majority are used with the verb *continue*. The BNC brings up no search results at all for “unabatedly”, and the main US corpus (COCA) has only one.


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## Ivan_I

lingobingo said:


> To *continue unabated* is an idiomatic construction.


As far as I understand "*unabated" *is a participle (adjective) modifying a verb. Can you come up with other examples in which a verb is modified by a participle (adjective)?


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## Barque

He returned tired.
He left humiliated.


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## Ivan_I

Barque said:


> He returned tired.
> He left humiliated.


They modify "he" in your examples.


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## Barque

They describe how he returned or left, just as in your example, "unabated" describes how the storm raged.


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## Ivan_I

They describe his condition, hence him not the actions. 

He returned tired. = He was tired.


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## Barque

By that logic, "unabated" describes the storm. I see no difference.


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## lingobingo

I think you’re missing the point, Ivan. Perhaps I should have just said that “continue unabated” qualifies as an idiom. But by and large, you can’t mess with idioms, and this is one that’s _not_ written in stone, in that it works with different verbs too.

In general, adjectives have their own separate adverb. *Unabated* does have one, but it’s rarely used. I’m sure there are other examples of this.


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