unpleasantly or upleasant

[juliana2]

Hi there!! I 'm here again full of questions.can you please tell me why we can't use the adverb "unpleasantly" in the following sentece?
" the room smelled unpleasant so I opened the window". don't we use an adverb after a verb???
thank you

[5jj]

It is the smell of the room which is unpleasant, not the manner in which it is smelling.

Compare:
The dog smelt awful. The smell of the dog was awful.
the dog smelt the parcel inquisitively. This is the manner in which the dog sniffed the parcel.

[Coolfootluke]

Hi there!! I 'm here again full of questions.can you please tell me why we can't use the adverb "unpleasantly" in the following sentece?
" the room smelled unpleasant so I opened the window". don't we use an adverb after a verb???
thank you

I am not a teacher.

Some verbs are copulative, or "linking", verbs. They create an equivalence between the subject of the sentence and what comes after the verb. "To be" is obviously one, because it says that a thing is something. Some verbs can be either copulative or not, like "smell". What comes after the verb can be a noun, a pronoun or an adjective. It is not an adverb, because adverbs do not modify nouns.

[TheParser]

Hi there!! I 'm here again full of questions.can you please tell me why we can't use the adverb "unpleasantly" in the following sentece?
" the room smelled unpleasant so I opened the window". don't we use an adverb after a verb???
thank you

***** NOT A TEACHER *****


Juliana,

(1) Teacher Fivejedjon and Member Coolfootluke have given you and

me excellent answers.

(2) I know how difficult this is. Even some native speakers get confused.

(3) Here is a "secret" that some people use to help them:

If you can replace the word with a form of "be," then probably

you need the adjective (pleasant = adjective/ pleasantly = adverb).

(a) The room is pleasant. (You would never say, "The room is

pleasantly, " would you.)

(4) Here are some more examples:

(a) The cookies smell _____. (delicious/ deliciously)

(b) The cake smells ____. (good/ well)

(c) Mona seemed ____. (angry/angrily)

(d) George looks ____. (intelligent/ intelligently)

(e) The valley lay ____. (quiet/ quietly)

Answers: cookies are delicious/ cake is good/ Mona was angry/
George is intelligent/The valley was quiet.

Credit: Some of these examples come from Mr. Michael Swan's Practical English Usage.