Re: Which part of speech?

"Ray Brown" <ray.brown@...> wrote:

> On Monday, May 9, 2005, at 05:23 , Muke Tever wrote:
>
> > According to AHD:
> > http://www.bartleby.com/61/91/Y0019100.html
> > ..."yesterday" has both nominal and adverbial senses.
>
> Precisely! I quote from 'Chambers English Dictionary':
>
> today
> "_n._ this or the present day. - _adv._ on the present day: nowadays"
>
> yesterday
> "_n._ the day last past: (often in _pl._) the recent past - _adv._ on the
> day last past: formerly: in the recent past"
It can get hairier with compounds:
"I was reading the CONLANG list last night."

So then how do you parse "last night" as an adverb?  Wouldn't
it just be simpler (in the Occam's Razor sense) to assign a
zero-derived case to every noun naming a day?

--
Damian

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