Re: Which part of speech?

On Thursday, May 12, 2005, at 09:00 , Andreas Johansson wrote:

> Quoting Ray Brown <ray.brown@...>:
[snip]

> But surely "last night" would've been considered an adverbial phrase back
> in
> your youth?
Yes, it would have been.

> It wouldn't be called a prepositional phrase now, would it?
No, it would not. It's an adverbial  :)

>>  Trask does not
>> even list the term 'adverbial phrase'; he does, however, list 'adverb
>> phrase' thus:
>> "A phrase whose lexical head is an adverb; _very quietly_, _right here_.
>> "
>>
>> But you two Swedes may like to know that the adjective 'adverbial' ("of
>> or
>> pertaining to adverbs") is also used as _noun_ in English as well. As a
>> noun it means:
>> "Any category with a distribution and a function similar to that of a
>> lexical adverb, such as _tomorrow night_, _in the garden_, _when she
>> arrives_ or _in order to find out_, regardless of its surface syntactic
>> realization, which may be that of a lexical adverb, an adverb phrase, a
>> prepositional phrase, an adverbial clause or a non-finite VP. The term
>> 'adverbial' is thus a functional one."
>
> Ah. This is basically the same as Swedish _adverbial_.
I thought 'twas.

> Apparently not a very common usage, tho; doesn't occur in the couple
> lexica I
> checked after reading BP's first post.
I think you're right.

Ray
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