On 2010-10-06, at 2:40 PM, Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar wrote:

>     I never quite bought in to the Huddleston and Pullum suggestion
> that we treat these as prepositions in all instances.

I think it was Jespersen's suggestion. Huddleston & Pullum just followed up on it. What concerns do you have with it?

> 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.*

But 'very' doesn't work for all adjectives. I don't think that's a problem. The point is that you can't simply have: "*I went there ago." But "I went there (two days) before" is fine, as are "I went there (two days) before Reiko" or "I went there (two days) before they did."

> "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.)

I'm pretty sure H & P would have it as a preposition, usually followed by a 'from' PP complement.

> There may be more, but it seems to me they
> somewhat constellate around time and space, giving us extent or duration
> or range.

As is typical for prepositions.

Best,
Brett

-----------------------
Brett Reynolds
English Language Centre
Humber College Institute of Technology and Advanced Learning
Toronto, Ontario, Canada
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