Placement of adverbs - "only" and others

[Mark44]

"surviving" is an adjective.
Modifying that with "only", means "only" is being used as an adverb to modify "surviving".

I don't think so.
The original expression was "only surviving original copy" (post #20). Here "only" is one of three adjectives that modify the noun "copy." If the example were "we were only surviving, not thriving." then I would agree that "only" modifies "surviving," and is in this case acting as an adverb.

 

[Mark44]

I think native speakers are in general not necessarily a good address to ask about grammar.

That's probably true, generally speaking, with native speakers of English, especially since grammar isn't taught at anything other than a superficial level in many (most?) public schools. A former lady friend of mine, who holds a PhD in Biology, was particularly unclear on how pronouns should be used; e.g., "Ann threw a party for Bill and I."

In the "olden days" students had to diagram sentences, reinforcing the ideas of subject, object,predicate, adverbial and adjectival phrases, and all the rest. I doubt that 5% of US public schools do that any more.

 

[Mark44]

Nah, we'd rather just offer fairly pointless opinions back and forth.

Some of the opinions are fairly pointless, but others are backed up by references. Just sayin'.

Keep in mind that this forum is about linguistics, at least in part.

 

[Stephen Tashi]

Keep in mind that this forum is about linguistics, at least in part.

Isn't a major topic in linguistics, formulating rules about how native speakers use words? (That's not a rhetorical question.)