Question: This British article titled "[Two stabbings near Crumpsall Park overnight in separate incidents just 200 metres apart](https://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/greater-manchester-news/two-stabbings-near-crumpsall-park-16367917)" says:

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> He was taken to hospital with serious injuries. Police described his condition **today** as serious but stable.
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In the second sentence, what does 'today' modify, 'described' or 'condition'?

If it modifies the noun 'condition', what's the part of speech of 'today'?

Answer: 
In the example *today* is a clause-level adjunct that modifies the entire clause:

[![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/dPbcb.png)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/dPbcb.png)

Words do not modify words; syntactic constituents modify other syntactic constituents. Do not get hung up on word order. Temporal adjuncts in English have flexible placement: they can come before, after, or at appropriate spots within the clause they modify. So *today* could be placed before *police*, after *police*, after *serious*, or after *condition*, and the sentence would have the same underlying grammatical structure.

If it was necessary to draw a distinction between the time of description and the time that the description referred to, then the sentence would have been phrased differently. Meaning is as vague as it's allowed to be in the context.
"[Today](https://www.dictionary.com/browse/today?s=t)" is an adverb modifying the main verb "described." 

"Today" being used as an adjective is extremely rare. Examples of it being used as an adjective would be: 

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> "The today look in clothing styles is..."
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and

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> "That look is very today."
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In a sentence like "I started a new job today" or "Today, I started a new job," which is how it's used in your sentence, it's an adverb modifying the main verb (i.e., the verb the subject performs in the main clause).

*Here's a hint:* If you can aptly move the modifier to both the beginning and the end of the sentence and have the sentence still make sense, it's an adverb as adverbs modifying the main verb can go either place, as well as other places, unlike adjectives, which always appear next to the noun they modify or after a linking verb.

In your sentence, you can move "today" to not just the beginning of the sentence and the end of the sentence and still have it mean the same thing, but you can also move it just before "described" and just after "described," the verb its modifying. To modify "condition," "today" would appear before "condition" as it, not fitting into any of the categories, is not a [postpostive adjective](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postpositive_adjective).