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