Bill, I'm going to be dogmatic and say that prepositional phrases are always
either adjectival or adverbial.  (Am I right, Martha??)

If "on Tuesday" were adjectival, what would it be modifying?

Christine in Baltimore



-----Original Message-----
From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar
[mailto:[log in to unmask]]On Behalf Of Spruiell, William C
Sent: Thursday, February 12, 2004 4:41 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: S V AdvP/AdjP (was Re: diagramming question)

I keep wondering why, in sentences such as #1, the prepositional phrase is
analyzed as adverbial:

#1         The concert is on Tuesday.

I don't mind the adverbial analysis, but I can't figure out why I couldn't
analyze it as adjectival instead. The fact that it specifies time is not, by
itself, grounds for ruling out an adjectival interpretation; the same kind
of expression in sentences such as #2 is adjectival:

#2         The concert on Tuesday is going to be much more expensive than
the one on Thursday.

Likewise, if all temporal information were adverbial, I'd have to analyze
the wh-clause in #3 as an adverbial clause:

#3         I can't recall a day when all of the students showed up for class
on time.

I'd rather treat that as a low-frequency kind of relative clause modifying
'day' - for one thing, it's not frontable the way adverbial clauses are.

That still leaves the question about what to do with a bare noun, as in #4:

#4         The concert is Tuesday.

I can easily think of situations in which I'd use 'Tuesday' as a full
adjectival form, though:

#5         The Tuesday concert is more expensive than the Thursday concert.

So I'm left thinking that I can get away with viewing 'on Tuesday' and
'Tuesday' in 4-5 as an adjectival constituents. Am I missing something
major, here? Again, I don't want to argue against the adverbial
interpretation, but I'd like to argue that the adjectival interpretation is
*a* valid one.

Bill Spruiell

Dept. of English
Central Michigan University



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