Brett,
     I never quite bought in to the Huddleston and Pullum suggestion 
that we treat these as prepositions in all instances. But there is a 
logic to it that is parallel to seeing a noun phrase as noun phrase even 
when it's adverbial in function. It may make sense, though, to think of 
them as complements (ratheer than modifiers) if only because they don't 
work for all adverbs, or even for all adverbs derived from 
prepositions.* "many years until."* "Many places to." We can say "many 
steps down" or "two stops beyond." Or "a whole month away" (this last 
one pure adverb, I think.) There may be more, but it seems to me they 
somewhat constellate around time and space, giving us extent or duration 
or range.
    I don't think it helps to protect students from  frustration by 
oversimplifying our categories. Students in college are always surprised 
to learn that a noun phrase can be adverbial, but they don't seem 
confused when you introduce them to the idea. I suspect that would be 
true in the lower grades as well.

Craig


On 10/6/2010 12:22 PM, Brett Reynolds wrote:
> On 2010-10-06, at 11:19 AM, Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar wrote:
>
>>     I would also wonder about "before" and "after" and "past" in "many
>> years before," "many years after," and "many years past." Are these all
>> "postpositions"?
> No, I don't think so. I'd call them prepositions even though they don't have an object, but traditionally they are adverbs. In the PP (or AdvP if you like) "many years after", "many years" functions as a modifier. This is different from "many years ago", where "many years" is a complement, likely an object, of 'ago'.
>
> Best,
> Brett
>
> -----------------------
> Brett Reynolds
> English Language Centre
> Humber College Institute of Technology and Advanced Learning
> Toronto, Ontario, Canada
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