primary english help!

[crisgal]

Can anyone help my daughter?
She needs to know what kind of word 'that' is in the following sentence:

"the ceiling was supported, like that of a barn"

[Quizmonkey]

It's a demonstrative pronoun.

[Bert]

Quizmonkey is correct. And there is absolutely nothing wrong with the use of the word 'like' in that sentence. How on earth could anybody think that 'that' was an adverb? An adverb is a word that modifies, or describes, another adverb, an adjective, or a verb. For example, in the sentence 'He ran very quickly.' 'very' is an adverb modifying 'quickly', which is also an adverb, describing the verb 'ran'.

[mungbeanz]

Actually Bert, 'that' can be used as an adverb.

"Bert was that wrong that I had to correct him."

[Bert]

I'll give you that (!), mungbeanz. But I was referring to the example given by the poster. The adverbial use of 'that' to modify an adjective is considered by some to be a vulgarism (Fowler: Modern English Usage).