This paper will give a functional account of preposing the adverbial phrase, during the weekend in the embedded clause of the matrix sentence: “Nine people are believed to have been killed during the weekend.”
The author would tend to de-emphasize grammatical explanations for theplacement of “during the weekend” and rather look at it functionally. For most purpose of communication, the placement of an adverbial phrase becomes significant only when a matrix sentence is being crafted for a particular purpose.
The reader or listener would be unlikely to be consciously aware of the subtlety in this case, though the impact would be greater.
The author would depend on context to choose how to use the clause, “ during the weekend”.
Case 1: Nine people are believed to have been killed during the weekend.
In this case people and their number come to the fore. The “who” context rather than the “when” context is considered more important. This style would be used if the writer or announcer considered the human tragedy more worthy of attention than the time context.
Case 2: During the weekend, nine people are believed to have been killed.
As in the case of a broadcast news report, the announcer would begin a news story with these words to set a time coontext. He or she would also use the words to provide continuity with a previous piece also set in that time period; however, in that case he or she would be more likely to say, “Also during the weekend”.
Case 3: Nine people are believed, during the weekend, to have been killed.
This is the least likely case. The author finds the sentence awkward. This would be used only if it were necessary to provide emphasis to both “nine people” and “killed”. A newscaster might say, “Horror has struck Montana! Nine people are believed, during the weekend, to have been killed. Police are still searching for the gunman who....”.

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