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Sat 27 Sep, 2014 11:58 am
In the sentence "Today I will begin a new life.", what is the word "today"? I've spoken to people around me and recieved different answers. One person says that "Today I" is a prepositional phrase, therefore the word "today" is a preposition. Another person says that it is a determiner that limits the pronoun "I". A third person says that it's a noun, just the same as if were replaced with Monday, Tuesday, etc. And there is even a person who thinks that it qualifies as an adverb because it expresses a relationship of time. I'd appreciate any help.
@miss questions,
I believe "today" in that sentence is an adverb. It answers the question "when": when will you begin a new life? Today.
Your other question, I think "each other" and "one another" are direct objects. Not sure whether they qualify as phrases of any sort.
John and Lucy love. Love who? Each other (direct object).
@Doubtful,
It's my understanding that an adverb, when it's modifying a verb, must be within the verb phrase, therefore, "Today I begin" would be the verb phrase? "Today I" is the complete subject and "will begin a new life" is the complete predicate?
@Lustig Andrei,
Just found this sentence parsing page that says that it is in fact an adverb. I've also asked this question to another forum and I was told that the sentence "Monday I will begin a new life" is not grammatically correct, but should rather be (at the very least) "On Monday I will begin a new life." This person says that the usage of "Monday" in the former example is a colloquelism, which is why (I'm guessing) it sounds proper.
I suppose that "Today" modifies the verb "begin". And I'm still not exactly sure what rule the sentence "Monday I will begin a new life" violates.
http://beta.visl.sdu.dk/visl/en/parsing/automatic/trees.php
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