Michael,
An addition to my response of last night.
Adverbs in English accumulate as complements or predicate adjuncts. Hence, you
get a sentence like:
_John rode his bicycle rapidly down the street from home to school every
morning for a week last May._
The order here is: manner, direction, origin, goal, frequency, duration,
time-when.  It is like peeling an onion; the manner adverb is the closest
bound
and the time-when the loosest.  This all relates to my analysis of _away from_
in my post last night.  The direction (_away_) comes before the origin (_from
it_), because these are two loose adjuncts modifying the predicate.  I think
it
is clearer to me now that the other adverbials are modifiers of the direction
and internal to that adverbial and not directly related to any origin phrase,
which doesn't even appear expressed in your original sentence.

Bruce

>>> [log in to unmask] 2/2/2005 8:48:13 PM >>>

Michael,

In my grammar I take it as a non-restrictive adverbial (of place)
modification to Laodicea.  Without ellipsis the noun phrase would read:
"Laodicea, (which is) about eleven miles (far) away (from it)."  This makes
_from_ (relation) the head, with the adverb (direction) _away_ modifying it,
which in turn has the adverb (distance) _far_ modifying it, which in turn
has the adverbial noun (extent) _miles_ modifying it, and then the adverbial
noun (number) _eleven_ modifying _miles_ (many varieties of adverbs!).
However, the idiom _away from_ seems to be moving in the direction of a
prepositional phrase modifying _away_.  If you can't live with ellipsis,
then perhaps you will have to have some of these basic syntactic functions
taken over by the parts that do appear. Maybe _miles_ would then take over
as the head with _away_ modifying it, or prossibly better vice versa.  They
are both adverbial with very similar meaning, one being simply more specific
than the other.

I hope this helps.

Bruce

----- Original Message -----
From: "R. Michael Medley (GLS)" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Wednesday, February 02, 2005 7:52 PM
Subject: what kind of phrase


> In the sentence:
>
> "Colosse has never been either rebuilt or excavated, unlike its neighbor
> Laodicea, about eleven miles away."
>
> What kind of phrase is "about eleven miles away"?  I realize it is
> performing an adverbial function, but what is the head word of the phrase?
>
> Thanks in advance for your advice.
>
>
> R. Michael Medley, Director
> Intensive English Program
> Eastern Mennonite University, Harrisonburg, VA 22802
> [log in to unmask]  (540) 432-4051
>
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