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