Bill,
Thank you for the research and response. "Hence" feels like an adverb parallel to "ago" in the phrase "three weeks hence." However, "notwithstanding" seems to have the best claim on the postposition category, my previous argument notwithstanding. It seems to like being put either before or after its object, without a change in meaning.
Bruce
-----Original Message-----
From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Spruiell, William C
Sent: Thursday, April 09, 2009 2:23 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Adpositions in English
Bruce:
I did a quick search; apparently Dryer (2007; ref to follow) argued that
three words (ago, hence, and notwithstanding) "can be analysed as"
postpositions -- I hit the reference in an online paper
(http://dspace.utlib.ee/dspace/bitstream/10062/6377/3/klavanmag.pdf).
Of course, "can be analysed as" sounds like a perfectly reasonable
hedging for this type of thing (presenting the assertion as a
possibility worth discussing) and it's in a piece on linguistic
typology. Typology encourages clumping, since focusing on differences
inevitably leaves one without a field (I'm saying this as someone whose
dissertation was on typology, and who had to try to figure out what to
count as a "nominalization" in languages with very different lexical
category-marking systems than English has). I suspect that somewhere
between Dryer and that syntax intro, some very important caveats and
limitations were dropped.
Bill Spruiell
Ref:
Dryer, M. S. 2007. Word order. In T. Shopen (ed). Language Typology and
Syntactic Description. Vol. I, 2nd ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press,
-----Original Message-----
From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Bruce Despain
Sent: Thursday, April 09, 2009 2:32 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Adpositions in English
I read in a recent introduction to syntax that English has at least one
"preposition" that follows its object. The example given was "ago" as
in "three weeks ago." I have been inclined to take this as a temporal
adverb with a degree modification quite common with adverbs. It thus
serves as an adverbial phrase like many prepositional phrases. The
phrase "three weeks before" seems to imply "three weeks before the time
under discussion." This does not seem to make "before" a post-posed
preposition. I can see that if it did, we might have an argument for
"ago" being post-posed. Has anyone on list seen this sort of analysis?
Bruce
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