Adverb phrase

Question

In this sentence "With Halloween only a few days away, these interesting facts should feed the frenzy of Americans who will spend $6.9 billion this year." Is "only a few days away" is a adverb phrase modifying the noun "Halloween"?

Anonymous · Accepted Answer

pen grape 927 Is "only a few days away" is a adverb phrase modifying the noun "Halloween"?

Adverbs don't modify nouns by definition. The way I see it, there is an understood verb there, "With Halloween (being) only a few days away …." The phrase modifies the phantom participle. I find traditional grammar inadequate to describe many things in English, and this is one of them for me.

Anonymous · Answer

pen grape 927 In this sentence "With Halloween only a few days away, these interesting facts should feed the frenzy of Americans who will spend $6.9 billion this year." Is "only a few days away" is a adverb phrase modifying the noun "Halloween"?

[With Halloween only a few days away], these interesting facts should feed the frenzy of Americans who will spend $6.9 billion this year.

No: only a few days away is a preposition phrase with the preposition away as head modified by the noun phrase only a few days. The preposition phrase then modifies the noun Halloween.

It has a subject and predicate structure, but with no verb in the predicate. The bracketed PP functions as adjunct to the clause these interesting facts should feed ... .

The underlined expression is a verbless clause, where "with" is semantically similar to "is", cf. Halloween is only a few days away.

(Incidentally, adverbs can modify noun phrases, and even very rarely nouns, but as explained that's not the case here.)

Adverb phrase

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