Far Away?

TakaThese are objectives relating to cosmic environments, far away from our daily lives.

In my opinion, it modifies "objectives."
You could argue that it modifies "environments," but "common sense" seems to favor "objectives."

"Far away" has an appealing connection to "cosmic," but the cosmos is right here, too.
Surely we would have to travel many light years to reach a "cosmic environment"!

"Far away" commonly relates to physical distance, but in this case I believe it refers to remoteness of interest.
The concerns of cutting edge science are "far removed" from the concerns of the average person.

(For example, "Your answer is far away from the truth" has nothing to do with physical distance.)

Your choices are not mutually exclusive.

(1) a modifier of 'cosmic environments' - Yes. That's one way to parse it.
(2) a modifier of 'objectives' - Yes. That's another way to parse it.
(3) a complement (i.e. These are objectives relating to cosmic environments+These are far away from our daily lives) - Yes. That's another way to parse it. This one is more like (2) than like (1).

(4) a reduced adverbial clause - Not sure. I would not say so, but I wouldn't quibble over it if someone else thought of it that way.

It's hard (for me) to say there is only one right answer in this case.

CJ

CalifJim(3) a complement (i.e. These are objectives relating to cosmic environments+These are far away from our daily lives) - Yes. That's another way to parse it. This one is more like (2) than like (1).CJ

If it were a modifier of 'objectives', it would be the same as:

(2') These are objectives relating to cosmic environments, which (environments) are far away from our daily lives.

How come (3) is more like (2)?

(3) These are (objectives relating to cosmic environments)+(far away from our daily lives).

I took this:

Taka(3) a complement (i.e. These are objectives relating to cosmic environments+These are far away from our daily lives)

to mean:

These are objectives relating to cosmic environments+These objectives are far away from our daily lives

The way you wrote it left the antecedent of "these" after the plus sign ambiguous, I suppose, and I took it to refer to 'objectives'.

CJ

TakaAbout 'far away', grammatically, which is it?

Sorry, Taka. I'm afraid I missed the thrust of your question.

But I agree that if you toss out "meaning," all of the first three are possible.

As to whether or not one excludes another, without meaning it seems to come down to a question of grammatical definition.

I'm thinking at this point that any example you might construct to illustrate any of your choices would be meaning specific.

If B modifies A and C modifies B, does C modify A? It depends on the meanings.

You don't have to be sorry, Avangi. In fact, I thought your analysis was very plausible.

I suppose grammatically, you must consider the antecedents of "these," X & Y; phenomena and physics.
These are far away. This could be the main clause.

These are far away from our daily lives, objectives relating to cosmic environments.

Now "objectives" becomes the complement, and the participial phrase is of course adjectival.

We're just rearranging the deck chairs. on the Titanic

- A.

If we follow the closest-comes-first rule taking the semantics into account, I think the answer you posted first is plausible enough, so don't worry, Avangi.