It doesn’t do any good to sleep** extra** hours ahead of time when you know you will have to stay up late.
In this sentence, is 'extra' used as an adjective or an adverb? I think 'extra' is used as an adverb because 'sleep' is an intransistive verb.
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1Try to replace "extra" with "additional" or "three more" for instance.– MorganFRCommented Nov 30, 2016 at 9:58
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Yes, I have tried it. You mean it works as an adjective?If so, how does "extra hours" emphasise the verb "sleep"?– learnerCommented Nov 30, 2016 at 10:27
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It's an adjective.– Mohd Zulkanien SarbiniCommented Nov 30, 2016 at 11:20
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1 Answer
"Extra hours" is a coherent phrase. "Extra" directly modifies "hours". "Extra" is an adjective, and "hours" is a noun.
Either "to sleep" is transitive, which allows "extra hours" to act as the infinitive's direct object, or "to sleep" is intransitive, which requires "extra hours" to act as an adverbial.
In this case, I find the adverbial explanation more sensible. "Hours" is a temporal noun, and temporal noun phrases often act as adverbial constructions. "To sleep extra hours" carries the same meaning as "to sleep for extra hours" or "to sleep through extra hours". Wikipedia's entry on adverbials explicitly mentions temporal noun phrases as a common adverbial form.
The extra hours in question do receive any action. They merely represent the duration of the action.
In this sentence, "extra hours" is an adverbial noun phrase which contains the adjective "extra".
