Re: adjectival vs. adverbial prepositional phrases

Nathaniel G. Lew <natlew@...> writes:

> little grammatical distinction is made between prepositional phrases
> modifying nouns and those modifying sentences as a whole (or their
> predicates).
>
> For example, in the sentence "The presents under the tree are for your
> sister," the prepositional phrase "under the tree" is adjectival.  In "I
> sat under the tree and opened the presents," it is "adverbial"
You may or may not know, but this is a typical English ambiguity.
Spanish simply doesn't let you do that; "the presents under the tree"
are "the presents THAT ARE under the tree". That is, the adverbial
meaning is made explicit by providing a verb. Alternatively you
have things like

    los regalos  de abajo del    árbol
    the presents of below of-the tree

which could be viewed as a noun phrase modified by an adjectival phrase
(introduced by "de", in its "associative" role). This is because the
preposition "abajo" patterns as a noun, so "abajo del árbol" could be
thought of as a noun phrase.


--Pablo Flores
  http://www.angelfire.com/scifi2/nyh/index.html
  "The future is all around us, waiting, in moments
   of transition, to be born in moments of revelation.
   No one knows the shape of that future or where it
   will take us. We know only that it is always born
   in pain."  -- G'Kar quoting G'Quon, in "Babylon 5"