You can still hear MAKH’s 1985 IFG wording here (emphases his)...6.2.2.2 QualifierWhat of the element which follows the Thing? The original example, Look at those two splendid old electric trains with pantographs, ended with the phrase with pantographs; this also is part of the nominal group, having a function we shall refer to as Qualifier.Unlike the elements that precede the Thing, which are words (or sometimes word complexes, like two hundred, very big; see Section 6.3.2), what follows the Thing is eithera phrase or a clause.... With only rare exceptions, all Qualifiers are rankshifted.... Like the other, ‘ranking’ (i.e. non-embedded) elements of the nominal group, 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.In some 4,600 years ago, it’s not the adverb ago that is rankshifted, but the nominal group some 4,600 years. The adverb ago doesn’t ‘characterise’ or define the Thing years. Rather some 4,600 years specifies ‘how long ago’.This is brought out by proportionalities like...how long ago : how far away ::very long ago : so far away ::some 4,600 years ago : about 4,600 miles away
[1] To be clear, there are many common examples of Qualifiers that are not rankshifted. For example:
- the shortest distance possible
- the most ludicrous hypothesis imaginable
- the time available
- the truth unvarnished
- a people abandoned
- life everlasting
- something unexpected
- anything unusual
In any case, the adverbial group ago is rank-shifted, to the rank of word, since it serves as an element of nominal group structure.
[2] To be clear, 4,600 years is not rankshifted. The adverbial group ago serves as Qualifier in the nominal group because it characterises the Thing years as 'time: past', in contradistinction to the adverbial group hence, which would characterise the Thing years as 'time: future'.
On the other hand, unlike the constituents of a genuine adverbial group, the words 4,600 years are not adverbs of polarity, comparison or intensification that serve as premodifiers of ago. Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 419-22) explain:
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.
[3] To be clear, the first two lines satisfy the conditions of being adverbial groups, since each features an adverb as Head premodified by adverbs of intensification. The last line, however, does not satisfy these conditions, and simply shows nominal groups with a temporal Qualifier, as previously explained. A single form, ago or away, is insufficient evidence of a common function structure. A structure is the relation among functional elements.
