yo4561 Wrote:This may be a silly question, but can adverbial mods modify adverbial mods? I realize that logically "skipping lunch regularly" cannot modify "arriving early every day", but what is the rule around this (or how should I think about this)? Can adverbial mods only modify clauses and not each other?
Not a silly question at all! By definition, adverbs can modify verbs, adjectives, other adverbs, and others.
In the Sal example, you are right that "skipping lunch regularly" couldn't logically describe how he is "arriving early every day," but Parallelism is a strong indicator, too. All three adverbial modifiers -- arriving, skipping, leaving -- not only describe how "Sal applied himself," but also are parallel with each other, indicating that they play the same role in the sentence.
That said, here are some examples with an adverbial mod of an adverbial mod:
Sal laughed very heartily at his boss's joke. Sal = subject
laughed = verb
heartily= adverb, describing how he laughed
very = adverb, describing the degree to which his laugh was "heartily" performed
In the example below, I added an adverbial modifier to each of the three parallel modifiers in the original example:
Sal applied himself in his new job, arriving early every day
at the expense of his sleep quality, skipping lunch regularly
against his nutritionist's advice, and leaving late every night
after the sun set.
