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Examples:

  • People these days have it easy.
  • People back then didn't know about germs.
  • The news today makes up for the news yesterday.
  • The meeting Monday will complete the agenda from the meeting Friday.

In some cases it can be parsed as an adverb modifying the verb or whole sentence, but not always. And it often seems very tightly tied to the noun.

Since the times can usually be moved into a prepositional phrase (usually of/from), my best guess is a noun adjunct, but noun adjuncts that occur after the noun are supposed to be extremely rare (the only examples I've seen were all names).

I found this post but the only answers that make sense are downvoted.

o11c
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    How is "the news recently" different grammatically from "the news today" (for example)? – Laurel May 25 '21 at 03:53
  • https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/75491/what-exactly-is-an-adverb?r=SearchResults – user405662 May 25 '21 at 04:05
  • @Laurel That sounds like an error to me (use "recent news"), unless the adverb is modifying the verb or the whole sentence (in which case it can be moved, but some of my examples can't). If it is allowed I could analyze it as "the news [that we have heard] recently" but that seems a lot to elide ... – o11c May 25 '21 at 04:37
  • @user405662 I'm aware that "adverb" is a strange category, but I still don't see any examples of adverbs modifying nouns there. Am I missing something in particular? – o11c May 25 '21 at 04:40
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    No: they are not rare. They are all temporal post-head modifiers. "These days" is an NP modifying "people"; "back then" is a PP modifying "people"; "today" is an NP modifying "news", and "Monday / Friday" are NPs modifying "meeting". – BillJ May 25 '21 at 05:18
  • To me they are elided phrases. For example "People back then" is a shortened form of "People who lived back then": "The news today" is short for "The news that came out today" and so on. Colloquial English uses elidation a lot. – BoldBen May 25 '21 at 05:39
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    @BoldBen I wouldn't go along with what you say. There's no reason to say they are reduced clauses. NPs (typically demoting properties such as as age, time and date etc.) can certainly post modify nouns. And PPs even more freely so. Your suggestions are simply paraphrases, not syntactic analyses. – BillJ May 25 '21 at 05:53
  • @BoldBen In the first two examples, "these days" and "back then" are adverbs that modify the clauses. This can be seen by the fact that they can be moved to the start or end of the sentence (set off from the main clause by a comma), with no change of meaning. – Rosie F May 25 '21 at 05:59
  • @BillJ Maybe I'm being a bit thick but I don't see how 'back then' is a noun phrase. Adjectival phrase certainly but I don't see it as a noun phrase – BoldBen May 25 '21 at 06:06
  • @Rosie F How are they adverbs? I don't see what verbs they are modifying. I'd accept adjectives modifying 'people' but I don't see them as adverbs. – BoldBen May 25 '21 at 06:08
  • @BoldBen Not all adverbs modify verbs. Some modify adjectives; some modify other adverbs; some modify clauses. – Rosie F May 25 '21 at 06:28
  • All: Please write an answer, particularly if your view differs from that held by others. The question is obviously non-trivial. – Andrew Leach May 25 '21 at 08:48
  • @BoldBen I actually said it's a PP. – BillJ May 25 '21 at 09:21
  • @RosieF "days" is a noun, so "these days" is an NP. "Then" (in modern grammar) is a preposition, so "back then" is a PP. All the phrases in bold are modifiers in NP structure, not in clause structure. – BillJ May 25 '21 at 09:25

1 Answers1

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[1] [People these days] have it easy.

[2] [People back then] didn't know about germs.

[3] [The news today] makes up for the news yesterday.

[4] [The meeting Monday] will complete the agenda from [the meeting Friday].

The elements in bold are all temporal post-modifiers in NP structure.

In [1], [3] and [4] they are NPs modifying respectively "people", "news, "Monday" and "meeting". In [2] it's a PP modifying "people".

BillJ
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  • I don't see how "back then" can be a prepositional phrase. I see "back" as an adjective modifying the noun "then"; "people then" has the same meaning. – o11c May 25 '21 at 16:17
  • @o11c modern grammar classifies the "back" in "back then" as a preposition. It has a different sense to the "back" found in, for example "back door". In the temporal expression "back then", the prep "then" occurs as complement of "back", thus "back then" is analysed as a PP. link – BillJ May 25 '21 at 17:21