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Are the following sentences acceptable to native speakers?

  1. I want it so bad.
  2. The children grew up happy and healthy.
  3. Jimmy works hard.
  4. He followed her quick.

What adjectives can be used as adverbs? Are there rules for that?

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    Hello, wada. You have to be careful; in your example (2), 'happy and healthy' actually are adjectives in what is called a resultative (it could, interestingly, alternatively here be a depictive) construction (they refer to the children as they are growing up and/or when they have grown up). // If you look up 'hard', you will see that there is also an adverb usage (an 'intercategorial polyseme'!). // The other two examples are non-standard / colloquial to unusual forms using adjectives where traditional English requires adverbs (badly; quickly).In fact, ... – Edwin Ashworth Jun 8 '19 at 14:48
  • 'Quick' is considered allowable as an adverb, but this has been covered here before. Mark Nichol has written a good article entitled 'flat adverbs'. – Edwin Ashworth Jun 8 '19 at 14:51
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    All fine for me, but in 2) I'd say happy and healthy really are adjectives, and in 3) there is no alternative adverbial form. 1) and 4) are less formal than the -ly versions - this doesn't really stand out in 1) because it feels informal anyway, but it does in 4), which is neutral. I wouldn't say any if the examples involve using adjectives as adverbs - it's just that adverbs sometimes have the same form as adjectives. Past participles sometimes have the same form as the simple past, but we don't say we are using the simple past as a past participle. – user339660 Jun 8 '19 at 14:55
  • @minty "In 3) there is no alternative adverbial form." Jimmy works strenuously? ;) But, yes, there is no adverbial form of hard that actually means hard (which hardly does not). – Jason Bassford Jun 8 '19 at 15:01
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    @EdwinAshworth I hadn't noticed the close vote was yours, sorry! But the user has not returned, so we don't really know what it is that they're asking here. It seems overly broad, and somewhat misguided. And no research from dictionaries, let alone from Wipikedia. Probably we can find a dup to close it against under the prescriptivist-poppycock tag. – tchrist♦ Jun 8 '19 at 19:01
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In comments Minty wrote:

All fine for me, but in 2) I'd say happy and healthy really are adjectives, and in 3) there is no alternative adverbial form. 1) and 4) are less formal than the -ly versions - this doesn't really stand out in 1) because it feels informal anyway, but it does in 4), which is neutral. I wouldn't say any if the examples involve using adjectives as adverbs - it's just that adverbs sometimes have the same form as adjectives. Past participles sometimes have the same form as the simple past, but we don't say we are using the simple past as a past participle.

and

There are alternative adverbs, for sure - there almost always are - but there is no alternative adverbial form of the lexeme hard. My point was that this makes it unlike quick and bad, both of which have two adverbial forms - the flat adverb and the -ly adverb.

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In comments Edwin Ashforth wrote:

Hello, wada. You have to be careful; in your example (2), 'happy and healthy' actually are adjectives in what is called a resultative (it could, interestingly, alternatively here be a depictive) construction (they refer to the children as they are growing up and/or when they have grown up). // If you look up 'hard', you will see that there is also an adverb usage (an 'intercategorial polyseme'!). // The other two examples are non-standard / colloquial to unusual forms using adjectives where traditional English requires adverbs (badly; quickly). In fact, ...

'Quick' is considered allowable as an adverb, but this has been covered here before. Mark Nichol has written a good article entitled 'flat adverbs'.

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