In the sentence, "Justice Department to announce lawsuit against Texas over law that bans nearly all abortions" are the prepositional phrases "against Texas" and "over law" adjectives that describe the type of lawsuit or adverbs? Explain why adjective or adverb also.
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If "against Texas" and "over law" are preposition phrases, how can they also be adjectives? The PPs are functioning as complements of "lawsuit".– BillJSep 14, 2021 at 8:18
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1 Answer
"Against Texas" qualifies "lawsuit", so it acts as an adjective. The same is true of "over [the/a] law".
(Note that headlines often omit words that are required in actual sentences.)
As to why the phrases are adjectival, it's because they modify the noun "lawsuit".
answered Sep 13, 2021 at 22:47
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But not every phrase that modifies a noun is an adjective. Nouns can be post-modified by a wide range of expressions, e.g. by an AdjP ("people fond of animals"), an appositive NP ("the opera 'Carmen'"), a non-appositive NP ("a woman my age"), a finite clause ("the car that he sold me") or a non-finite clause ("the person for you to consult") We don't want to call them all adjectives, do we?!– BillJSep 14, 2021 at 8:26