21 (6)(a) (b) They can stay/leave/hide/die/starve/cry [verb] *They can gorgeous [adjective]/happily [adverb]/down [preposition]/door [noun] And the only category of word which can occur after very (in the sense of extremely) is an adjective or adverb, as we see from (7) below: (7)(a) (c) (e) He is very slow [very+adjective] (b) He walks very slowly [very+adverb] *Very fools waste time [very+noun] (d) *He very adores her [very+verb] *It happened very after the party [very+preposition] (But note that very can only be used to modify adjectives/adverbs which by virtue of their meaning are gradable and so can be qualified by words like very/rather/somewhat etc;.
