I remember meeting all of you when you were just starting Grade 7 at this school.

Thank you for coming today to attend the graduation ceremony at No. 3 Junior High School. First of all, I’d like to congratulate all the students who are here today. I remember meeting all of you when you were just starting Grade 7 at this school. You were all so full of energy and thirsty for knowledge. And yes, some of you were a little difficult to deal with!

Source: Go for it! 9, an English textbook for junior high school students in China, Cengage Learning and PEP

I remember meeting all of you when you were just starting Grade 7 at this school.

In this sentence, I think the when-clause is a relative clause not an adverbial one. What do you say?

diamondcutter said:

I remember meeting all of you when you were just starting Grade 7 at this school.

In this sentence, I think the when-clause is a relative clause not an adverbial one. What do you say?

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I parse the when-clause as an adverbial clause, not within the matrix clause (I remember . . .), but within the nonfinite clause headed by meeting.

Consider that if we made the nonfinite clause complementing remember a finite that-clause, as below,

I remember that I met all of you when you were just starting Grade 7 at this school.

we could then use a cleft construction within the complement clause to isolate the when-clause and thereby showcase its adverbial status:

I remember that it was when you were just starting Grade 7 at this school that I met you.

As you can see, the when-clause specifies the time of the speaker's meeting all of them rather than the time of his remembering doing so.

diamondcutter said:

Thank you for coming today to attend the graduation ceremony at No. 3 Junior High School. First of all, I’d like to congratulate all the students who are here today. I remember meeting all of you when you were just starting Grade 7 at this school. You were all so full of energy and thirsty for knowledge. And yes, some of you were a little difficult to deal with!

Source: Go for it! 9, an English textbook for junior high school students in China, Cengage Learning and PEP

I remember meeting all of you when you were just starting Grade 7 at this school.

In this sentence, I think the when-clause is a relative clause not an adverbial one. What do you say?

Click to expand...

I remember meeting all of you [when you were just starting Grade 7 at this school].

You are on the right lines, but I'd talk of 'relative construction' rather than 'relative clause' for the reason given below.

I take "when" to be a preposition here in a fused relative construction, thus the bracketed expression is not a clause but a preposition phrase headed by "when" with a finite clause complement.

It has a paraphrase containing noun + integrated (defining) relative:

I remember meeting all of you on the occasion when you were just starting Grade 7 at this school.

diamondcutter said:

I remember meeting all of you when you were just starting Grade 7 at this school.

In this sentence, I think the when-clause is a relative clause not an adverbial one. What do you say?

Click to expand...

Hi, Diamondcutter—Your question indicates that you perceive a relative-clause interpretation of the when-clause/phrase to be different from an adverbial interpretation of the same phrase. I'm interested to know what motivated your question. Did you perhaps think that the when-clause might somehow be modifying you?

In my first reply, I assumed that the reason you thought the when-clause/phrase might not be adverbial is that it cannot be fronted: "When you were just starting Grade 7 at this school, I remember meeting all of you." That's why my explanation was directed at explaining its adverbial role in the nonfinite clause headed by meeting.

PaulMatthews has not denied that the when-phrase plays an adverbial role in the nonfinite clause headed by meeting. He has just reinterpreted its phrasal status. But whether we call it a when-clause or a prepositional phrase with a "fused relative construction," it is still an adverbial in the nonfinite clause headed by meeting.

In other words, if you embrace the counterintuitive modern idea (popularized by CGEL) that when is a preposition and go in for a "fused relative construction" analysis, you won't have moved away from the adverbial analysis at all. You will simply have reinterpreted the phrasal nature of the adverbial.

Hi, Lycidas.
When I put the sentence into Chinese, I had to know the function of the when-clause exactly. Otherwise, my Chinese translation would not be clear enough. That’s why I asked the question.
I suddenly recalled a similar question I asked on this forum two years ago.

That was me when I was two years old.

For this sentence, I think the when-clause means a prepositional phrase “at the age of two”.

diamondcutter said:

When I put the sentence into Chinese, I had to know the function of the when-clause exactly. Otherwise, my Chinese translation would not be clear enough. That’s why I asked the question.

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The function is identical whether you analyze it as a fused-relative construction or as an adverbial clause. Either way, the "when"-construction functions adverbially.

Surely you are aware that there are many types of adverbial: adverbs, noun phrases, dependent clauses, prepositional phrases.

I guess that your question amounts to how the "when"-construction should be paraphrased in Chinese, and, of course, that is something none of us can help you with.

diamondcutter said:

That was me when I was two years old.

For this sentence, I think the when-clause means a prepositional phrase “at the age of two”.

Click to expand...

Yes, the "when"-construction in that sentence can be paraphrased by the prepositional phrase "at the age of two."

However, that does NOT mean that the "when"-construction is itself a prepositional phrase.

If I could paraphrase a noun phrase with a "that"-clause, that would not make the noun phrase a "that"-clause.

Lycidas said:

CGEL

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That's The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language (Huddleson and Pullum, 2002), not A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language, (Quirk et al, 1985)

diamondcutter said:

When I put the sentence into Chinese, I had to know the function of the when-clause exactly. Otherwise, my Chinese translation would not be clear enough. That’s why I asked the question.
I suddenly recalled a similar question I asked on this forum two years ago.

That was me when I was two years old.

(Two children are looking at a photo.) Anna: Who’s that? Kevin: That was me when I was two years old. Anna: That’s a cute picture. (From Let’s Go 5, an English textbook for children, OUP) I wonder how to analyze the when-clause. Is it a relative clause, an adverbial clause of time or a...

www.usingenglish.com

That was me when I was two years old.

For this sentence, I think the when-clause means a prepositional phrase “at the age of two”.

Click to expand...

You are on the right lines.

It's important to always distinguish category and function. Categories include noun, verb, adjective, preposition, etc., while functions include subject, object, complement etc.

If like me you take "when" to be a preposition, then when I was two years old belongs to the category preposition phrase, and its function is that of modifier. Those are the two labels that would be applied to the constituent when I was two years old in a tree diagram of your example.