I considered creating a new blog to feed my obsession with English grammar, but I realized that to think about these things deeply is to live fully away, so I will just post it here and put a grammar tag on it.
Before you read this post in entirety, consider how you would classify this sentence: The performance and the party are at the same time.
How would you classify "at the same time?"
I have been obsessed with whether or not a prepositional phrase of time or place is adjectival or adverbial when following "to be". Consider this:
If you were going to substitute a word for “at the same time” would you use simultaneous (an adjective) or simultaneously (an adverb)?
If "at the same time" can describe the compound subject in this sentence, is it a big leap from this to classifying "Tuesday" as adjectival in this sentence: The performance is Tuesday.
The options we have for the verb here are 1. it is a linking verb or 2. it is an intransitive verb.
If Tuesday is adverbial, then the verb cannot be a linking verb.
If "is" is not linking "performance" to "Tuesday", then what is it doing in this sentence? To say, "The performance is", is just to say "there is a performance". The purpose of this sentence is to say something more about the performance.
I anticipate that many will reply that what the sentence really means is: The performance and the party will happen at the same time. Here, "at the same time" modifies will happen, making it an adverb. But, this is not a semantic question, but a grammatical one. And who talks like that anyway?
I am not married to this idea that all prepositional phrases following "be" are adjectival, but we have a serious courtship going on.
I could be missing something obvious which I have done before, so I appreciate your thoughts.
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