Re: Which part of speech?

On Monday, May 9, 2005, at 05:23 , Muke Tever wrote:

> Christopher Wright <dhasenan@...> wrote:
>> Gregory Gadow palsalge
>>> I should know this, but my brain keeps coming up empty (like that hasn'
>>> t
>>> ever happened before.)
>>>
>>> In the sentences, "It is raining today" and "Yesterday, she went to the
>>> market", what part of speech is 'today' and 'yesterday'? I want to say
>>> that they are acting as adverbs, but that doesn't seem right.
But it is right  :)

>> They're nouns:
>>
>> 1) Today is a good day to die.
>> 2) Tomorrow will come shortly.
>
> They're nouns in those sentences, certainly, but not in the
> sentences in question.
I agree 100% on both points.

I fail to see how the sentences "It is raining today" and "Yesterday, she
went to the market" can be satisfactorily parsed with 'today' and
'yesterday' treated as nouns.

> I think some of these constructions
> don't translate anyway: AFAIK you can't use 'hodie' in Latin
> as a noun at all.
Correct, nor can 'heri' (yesterday) or 'cras' (tomorrow) - exactly the
same applies to Esperanto's 'hodiau', 'hierau' or 'morgau' [breve on final
-u in all three words] - they are all adverbs in the two languages.

The best that Latin offers to translate (1) and (2) above are the derived
adjectives _hodiernus_ (of or pertaining to today), _hesternus_ (of or
pertaining to yesterday [heri <-- *hesi]) and _crastinus_ (of or
pertaining to tomorrow), thus:

dies hodiernus est ad moriendum idoneus.
day  of_today  is  for dying    proper/becoming   [_moriendum_ is a gerund]

dies crastinus   mox     veniet
day  of_tomorrow shortly will_come

I leave it to someone more familiar with Esperanto to say how that would
express the same concepts.

>
>> Adverbials act a bit differently:
>> 3) *Recently was a good time to die.
>> 4) *Soon will come shortly.
>
> But there's nothing wrong with "It was raining recently" or
> "Soon, she will be going to the market", is there?
Nope.

hodie pluit  - it is raining today       [adverb, verb]
nuper pluebat - it was raining recently  [adverb, verb]

heri ad mercatum adiit - yesterday to the market she_went     [adverb, PP,
  verb]
mox ad mercatum adibit - soon she will be going to the market [adverb, PP,
  verb]

> 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"

The notion that each word in English is assigned to one, and only one,
part of speech just does not hold water. As my English teacher way back in
the 1950s used to drum into us regarding English words:
"By their deeds shall ye know them"

Ray
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ray.brown@freeuk.com
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Anything is possible in the fabulous Celtic twilight,
which is not so much a twilight of the gods
as of the reason."      [JRRT, "English and Welsh" ]

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