Adverbs commonly modify verbs, adjectives, and other adverbs, but they can sometimes modify other parts of speech such as pronoun.
(Modifying adverbs underlined and modified pronouns in blue font)
1. Intensifying adverbs can pre-modify some indefinite pronouns
Intensifying adverbs can pre-modify some indefinite pronouns. Examples:
Absolutely no one turned up for the optional practice session.
Nearly everyone was promoted.
Hardly anyone seems to care about the issue.
Our head of the department decides barely anything these days.
2. Adverb else can post-modify pronouns
Adverb else can post-modify compound indefinite pronouns, those that come with suffix -body, -thing, and -one. Examples:
Everybody else except Mac has agreed to sign on dotted lines.
When you lose something, an opportunity for something else presents itself.
Believing that you can become as good as anybody else is only the first, though important, step.
Someone who gossips to you about someone else will, sooner or later, gossip about you to others.
Draw inspiration from someone else’s feats.
Adverb else can post-modify indefinite pronoun all. Example:
We’ll move the court, if all else fails.
Adverb else can post-modify wh-pronouns. Examples:
Who else is attending today’s meet?
I don’t know what else I could’ve done.
3. Certain prepositional phrases can post-modify wh-pronouns
Certain prepositional phrases, in informal use, can post-modify wh-pronouns. (To be clear, we’ve now ventured outside adverb; these are adverbials.) Examples:
Who on earth will believe your story?
What (in) the heck are you doing here? [the heck is more idiomatic]
A tricky question, to end
In the following sentence, is pronoun being modified by adverb?
The phone is undeniably hers.
On the surface, adverb undeniably seems to modify pronoun hers. But I don’t think it does.
An adverb may not be considered modifying a noun or pronoun if it is mobile in a sentence. (Mobility here is defined as a position other than immediately before or after the modified word.) This is similar to immobility of predicative adjectives with respect to their modified nouns.
In the above example, undeniably is mobile, one variant being The phone undeniably is hers. If you look at examples in this post, you’ll find that adverbs are inseparable from the pronoun they are modifying, though you may dispute one or two. If you look at the examples of adverbs modifying nouns (link below), you’ll see the same pattern.
Learn more: Adverbs can modify almost every part of speech – and even some phrases. Learn what else can adverbs modify.
