Delahunty and Garvey
Table 11 groups SACs semantically, in a way that makes clear their over-
lap with adverbs. As we have just seen, prepositions also overlap with ad-
verbs, so it should come as no surprise that prepositions have affinities with
SACs. These affinities are more than semantic. Several items of Table 11 also
appear on the lists of prepositions (Table 7 and 8). Because of this overlap,
students may experience difficulties in telling a preposition from a SAC—
and a prepositional phrase from an adverbial clause. A simple way to keep
the two clear is to remember that a preposition only occurs in construction
with a following noun phrase and a SAC is followed by a clause. Let’s con-
sider an example.
(39) a. I left after the party.
b. I left after the party ended.
In (39a), after is followed only by a noun phrase (the party) and so must be a
preposition. In (39b), after is followed by both a noun phrase (the party) and
a verb phrase (ended) that together constitute a clause; thus after is a SAC in
(39b). We can confirm our formal analysis further by moving the group of
words after the party.
(40) a. After the party, I left.
b. *After the party, I left ended.
Since phrases often move as a unit, the prepositional phrase in (39a) can be
relocated at the front of the sentence, as it has been in (40a). But in (39b),
after the party cannot be moved, as the ungrammaticality of (40b) shows. Thus
it must not be a complete expression. In fact, the structure governed by after
in (40b) is the clause the party ended, as (41) shows.
(41) After the party ended, I left.Clauses like after the party ended are adverbial because they function much
as adverbs do, they have meanings similar to those of adverbs, and they are
relatively moveable.
Exercise
Create at least one sentence containing an adverbial clause for each of
the semantic categories represented in Table 11.