"I'll see you on tomorrow"; was: Re: Is it just me or ...

[Arnold M. Zwicky]

On Jul 7, 2006, at 12:21 PM, i wrote about:

> “on tomorrow,” “on yesterday”, “on today”

for which Paul Brians recommends just leaving out the "on" (and i
concur); even though the versions with "on" seem to be widespread,
they are non-standard.  we hear the echo of S&W's Omit Needless Words
(ONW) here.

which made me wonder about the main pattern for these expressions,
which allows for the alternation of plain NP (a "bare NP adverbial")
with "on" + NP:

I'll see you
   (on) Tuesday
   (on) the first Sunday in May
   (on) New Year's Day
   (on) Christmas Eve
   (on) the next day there's a full moon

now the facts about bare NP adverbials vs. PP adverbials are
monstrously complex: some adverbial expressions are obligatorily bare
(next year/April, *in next year/April), some have obligatory P (in
2007, *2007), some are dubiously bare (on Easter/Chrstmas/New
Year's, ?Easter/Christmas/New Year's, in April, ?April -- i'm
uncomfortable with the bare ones, though you can google up some
examples), and many alternate, as above.  the question is: why don't
ONW advocates insist on omitting the P in examples like those above,
and so requiring the (shorter) bare alternative?  why do they
countenance alternative forms?

arnold (zwicky at csli.stanford.edu)

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