Nastassja Riemermann ([info]tsukikage85) wrote in [info]linguistics,
@ 2008-04-20 16:18:00
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Current mood: confused
Current music:Anime Pulse - Episode 43: Fairy Princess NANA is sent into the Fushigi Yuugi by Kamisama’s Kazoku

Crazy introductory syntax homework.
"Mary appears to know that she will be fired tomorrow."
What is going on syntactically with "tomorrow" in this sentence? Whatever it is, it seems like the phrase dominating tomorrow is an adjunct of the VP first dominating "fire", but I wonder if maybe "tomorrow" is actually an Adv in this sentence, or if there's something weird like the DP being a complement of a PP adjunct to the VP with a null P? I dunno... This whole tree is an insane, overly-complicated mess.


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[info]pgdudda
2008-04-20 10:28 pm UTC (link)
I dunno... my gut feeling is that "tomorrow" is acting as a sentential adverb attaching to the entire phrase. For example, "Tomorrow, she will be fired" means the same things as "she will be fired tomorrow". I parse it like this:

[...that [ [ she [ [will be] fired ] ] tomorrow ] ]

But that's not a formal linguistic analysis, just my "native speaker's intuition".

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[info]dustinalfonso
2008-04-20 10:32 pm UTC (link)
+1

Adjunct to TP is how I'd draw it in

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[info]tsukikage85
2008-04-21 01:04 am UTC (link)
Okay, thank you. :)

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[info]gryphonavocatio
2008-04-21 03:20 am UTC (link)
I'd argue adjunct to the VP headed by 'fire'. Adverbs don't modify tense--they modify verbs, and in this case it is functioning as an adverbial of time indicating when the firing is to take place.

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[info]tsukikage85
2008-04-21 01:03 am UTC (link)
Okay, that makes sense. Thanks.

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[info]candrodor
2008-04-21 12:54 am UTC (link)
I've said it before, as an uninitiated person, that syntax screws with your head. I'm trying to get into it a bit now, and I agree all the more. >_>

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[info]tsukikage85
2008-04-21 01:01 am UTC (link)
Completely. ^^;

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