bad badly unfortunate unfortunately

[Mike12345]

Still badly, two men died on the way to the hospital.

Unfortunately, two men died on the way to the hospital.

As far as I know, adverbs usually qualify verbs and adjectives. But why do the two sentences use adverbs at the beginning. Can I use bad and unfortunate to replace them? Thank you!

 

[Rover_KE]

Where did you find these sentences?

The first doesn't make sense.

 

[Matthew Wai]

'They are called sentence adverbs'—quoted from https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/grammar/sentence-adverbs

 

[Matthew Wai]

As far as I know, adverbs usually qualify verbs and adjectives.

As far as I know, an adverb can also qualify another adverb, as in 'Thank you very much'.

 

[tzfujimino]

Can I use bad and unfortunate to replace them?

No, you can't.
However, "It is unfortunate that two men died on the way to the hospital." is OK if you wish to use the adjective "unfortunate".
[STRIKE]The adjective "bad" doesn't work in this way, unfortunately.[/STRIKE]


(Edit) Please answer Rover's question in his post above.
I'll take back what I've just said. "It is bad that ..." is actually OK: http://fraze.it/n_search.jsp?hardm=1&t=0&l=0&p=2&q=it's+bad+that
I apologize for any confusion caused.

 

[Mike12345]

Where did you find these sentences?

The first doesn't make sense.

An English test paper from China Still____(bad), two men died on the way to the hospital.

 

[tzfujimino]

An English test paper from China Still____(bad), two men died on the way to the hospital.

I think the answer is "worse" - the comparative form of "bad".
Context is really important - we need to know the previous sentence(s).

(Edit) http://www.ldoceonline.com/dictionary/better-harder-worse-etc-still