Adverbial Modifier

[jass011]

How to recognize adverbial modifier?
If I have sentence like this:-This transformed the sopping experience for millions of urban Americans.
According to part of speech what function does have this-....for millions of urban American.?

[JSmiley]

paraphrased it might be easier for you:
the shopping experience of millions of urban Americans was transformed by this.

[MikeNewYork]

How to recognize adverbial modifier?
If I have sentence like this:-This transformed the sopping experience for millions of urban Americans.
According to part of speech what function does have this-....for millions of urban American.?

As written, I would call it an adverbial prepositional phrase.

One test is to see if it can be moved.

For millions of Americans, this transformed the shopping experience.

If you change "for" to "of", it comes adjectival.

Notice you can't move that one.

"Of millions of Americans, this transformed..." doesn't work.

[Humble]

Hi, Jass,
I think your question is fallacious. My understanding is that only separate words or some sets of words can be parts of speech – a noun, a verb, an interjection etc. I’d ask “What part of the sentence is this group of words?” My answer would be: for millions… is an indirect object.
Cheers

[MikeNewYork]

Hi, Jass,
I think your question is fallacious. My understanding is that only separate words or some sets of words can be parts of speech – a noun, a verb, an interjection etc. I’d ask “What part of the sentence is this group of words?” My answer would be: for millions… is an indirect object.
Cheers

It's not an indirect object for me. That is a prepositional phrase.

[Humble]

Now I see our grammars are fundamentally different. No point debating. I won't, from now on.

[jass011]

I must tell you that both of you are right. It is indirect object but it is an prepositional phrase inside of the indirect object. At my university we do the sentence analisys like this:
Sent-->S+P
S-->NP(noun phrase)-->Pron.Dem.-->This
P-->VP(verb phrase)
VP-->Vtr.+D.O.+IO
Vtr-->transformed
D.O.-->NP
NP-->Det.(determinator)+M+H
Det.-->Art.def.-->the
M-->N-->shooping
H-->N-->experience
I.O-->Prep.P


etc.This is the way we do the syntactic analisys of the sentence.

[MikeNewYork]

Now I see our grammars are fundamentally different. No point debating. I won't, from now on.

It is not a huge difference, but it is an important one. Some grammars refer to the objects of "some" prepositional phrases as indirect objects. IMO, this veiwpoint stems from a mistaken attempt to liken our indirect objects to the Latinate "dative case". English has two distinct methods for indicating the same meaning.

I threw John the ball.
I threw the ball to John.

The problem with having them both be indirect objects is that "to John" acts as an adverb, but "John" (in the first sentence) does not.

In addition, many prepositional phrases have nothing to do with indirect objects.

Mom walked me to school.
We can't make that "Mom walked school me."

[jass011]

Hi Mike,
I agree with you.You are totaly right but prepositional phrase can be inside of I.O.When I think better this-...for millions-couldn't be I.O. No way!

[MikeNewYork]

Hi Mike,
I agree with you.You are totaly right but prepositional phrase can be inside of I.O.When I think better this-...for millions-couldn't be I.O. No way!

It is all about definitions, lad.