I agree with David on this one. From above, a Qualifier serves to identify an entity, answering which Thing is being talked about.E.g.- Which children?- The children [in blue hats].But not:- Which years?- Some 4,600 years [ago].So not a nominal group, but an adverbial group.
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[1] To be clear, socially, this is one member of Martin's community supporting another.
[2] To be clear, a Qualifier serves to characterise, not identify. Its function is experiential, not textual. Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 382):
… the Qualifier also has the function of characterising the Thing; and again the Deictic the serves to signal that the characteristic in question is defining.
[3] To be clear, viewed 'from above', the meaning that the embedded adverbial group ago expresses is 'time: past'. In this nominal group, it characterises the Thing years as 'in the past', as opposed to 'in the future', the latter expressed by the nominal group some 4,600 years hence.
Which children? children in blue hats
Which years? years ago.
[4] To be clear, on all the evidence, this is simply a nominal group. But more to the point, it cannot be an adverbial group, because its premodification is not limited to grammatical items expressing polarity, comparison and intensification. Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 419-22):
The adverbial group has an adverb as Head, which may or may not be accompanied by modifying elements. … Premodifiers are grammatical items like not and rather and so; there is no lexical premodification in the adverbial group. … The items serving as Premodifiers are adverbs belonging to one of three types – polarity (not), comparison (more, less; as, so) and intensification.
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