Bruce is right that it's a relic of an older form. Here's the OED etymology:
[pa. pple. of the preceding vb., used as adj. qualifying some noun of time, expressed or understood; in the latter case always preceded by long = long time. The full form agone had been contracted to ago in some dialects long before this usage began, in end of 14th c.; ago became the ordinary prose form from Caxton, but agone has remained dialectally, and as an archaic and poetic variant to the present day.]
So it has the postnominal position because it was once a past participle. Unfortunately we can't use it with "had" and make a past perfect out of it. Relic form like this are precisely the cases that become nonce forms or take on special meanings. Consider what's happened to the older preterits and past participles of "cleave" as in "to split." We've lost the original strong preterit "clove" except in very archaic usages. (The name of the spice is borrowed from Dutch.) "Cloven" is used only of hooves, and even then probably only in discussions of kosher food law. The ME weak form "cleft" is used as an adjective only with "palate," "lip," "chin," and maybe a few others. It's also used as a noun meaning a split in a rock.
The few examples we have of postpositions are less than compelling for a shift in English structure, and such a shift away from VO typology would be decidedly odd.
Herb
Herbert F. W. Stahlke, Ph.D.
Emeritus Professor of English
Ball State University
Muncie, IN 47306
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________________________________________
From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar [[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Bruce Despain [[log in to unmask]]
Sent: April 9, 2009 5:14 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Adpositions in English
Marshall,
Thank you for your response. I think the adjective "general" as in "attorney general," that was subject of a list query last week, would fill the bill.
The point of calling the prepositions "adpositions" was presumably the existence (even in English) of such one-off forms that call for their own extra-ordinary positioning. I was questioning the analysis, but it is possible that there is change in the language underway or idioms left as a relicts of earlier grammars.
-----Original Message-----
From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Myers, Marshall
Sent: Thursday, April 09, 2009 2:51 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Adpositions in English
Bruce,
Isn't there a single word adjective that follows the word it modifies? "Galore"?
Are there others?
I thought "galore" might be a French word that retained the position in French, but apparently it's not.
Marshall
Marshall
-----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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