grammar - What exactly is an "adverb"?


From comments to “Weekdays” used as an adverb", I learn that The Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary says "open weekdays from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m.", shows the word weekdays is an adverb.


It seems to me that in "We open weekdays at 7 a.m.", and "We open tomorrow at 7 a.m." both weekdays and tomorrow are the same "part of speech" - and again in "I'll go tomorrow".


I will happily describe words like happily and quickly as adverbs - for example...



"I'll go quickly", and by extension "I'll go quickly and quietly".



On the other hand...



"I'll go tomorrow" can't be extended to "I'll go tomorrow and quietly".



Am I being thick, or is OALD spouting nonsense?



Answer



The theory of adverbs (and of Conjunction Reduction) given by McCawley in The Syntactic Phenomena of English explains why you can't get your example


*"I'll go tomorrow and quietly."

It would have to come by Conjunction Reduction from


[[I'll go] tomorrow] and I'll [[go] quietly]

but Conjunction Reduction requires the two constituents to be conjoined to occupy the same place in the original conjoined structures. That is not the case here, as I've indicated with the brackets -- "tomorrow" is a sentence modifier, but the manner adverb "quietly" is a V' modifier.


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