Q: Postpositions in English?

[David Parkinson]

Another interesting case, similar to 'ago', is 'hence'. Like 'ago', 'hence'
does not appear without some premodifying expression of duration:

1a. *Hence, we will go to the carnival.              (Acceptable, but not
with 'hence' meaning 'some time from now')
1b. Three weeks hence, we will go to the carnival.

Stranding seems to me to be highly unlikely with this:

2. ??How long will you go there hence?

But 'hence' is a pretty upscale and uncommon word when used in this way; so
real data would be scarce.

I worked on this problem in our English grammar not long ago, and decided to
treat 'ago' and 'hence' (as well as 'apart', 'downstream', 'northward', &c.
&c.) as adverbs, not prepositions; mostly this decision was motivated by my
perception of the non-strandability of 'ago' or 'hence' from the NP, as well
as the fact that not only nominal, but also adverbial, material could
specify the duration at least of 'ago' (e.g., 'long ago'). Making this a
postposition would require that the postpositional object slot also be
allowed to be filled by adverbial material, which is a bit odd. It seemed to
be a more attractive solution to mark certain adverbs, adjectives,
prepositions, and subordinating conjunctions as permitting or requiring
premodification by nominal material:

Adjective: [ [Three weeks] pregnant] at the time...
Adverb: [ [4 years] prior to the outbreak of war]... they arrived [ [5 min.]
early]... I like fishing [ [25%] more than I used to]
Preposition: [ [Twelve days] after her birthday] ...
Conjunction: [ [Twelve days] after she celebrated her birthday] ...

Just about any preposition which indicates a path (and thereby implies a
physical distance) can be premodified by a noun phrase of distance:

3a. I live under the bridge ~ I live twenty feet under the bridge
3b. I walked along the path ~ I walked 4 miles along the path
3c. She cam into the room ~ She came barely a foot into the room

Interestingly, 'from', when used in this way, also (like 'ago' and 'hence')
requires nominal premodification:

4a. *We lived [from Houston]
4b. We lived [ [about 30 miles] from Houston]

On a slightly unrelated note, a nice fact about 'notwithstanding' as
postposition is that it can be postposed to a 'that' complement clause:

[ [That she was principal] notwithstanding], ...

----------------
David Parkinson, English Grammarian
Natural Language Group
Microsoft Corporation
One Microsoft Way
Redmond, WA
98052


 -----Original Message-----
From:   John Myhill [mailto:john at RESEARCH.HAIFA.AC.IL]
Sent:   Thursday, December 07, 2000 11:09 PM
To:     FUNKNET at listserv.rice.edu
Subject:        Re: Q: Postpositions in English?

Umm, actually I think 'How far is it away?' sounds fine. Maybe you
should investigate this. 'How long did it happen ago?' doesn't sound
so good, but 'How long was it ago?' seems okay. I think it has to do
with the length of the intervening material.

Oh, also there's 'apart', as in 'They were three feet apart'.

John Myhill











>(apologies to those who get this more than once)
>
>Colleagues,
>
>I am wondering if anyone can suggest criteria for deciding whether the
>English words "away" (1-3) and "ago" (4-5) should be considered
>postpositions.  Part of my interest in the question stems fro the fact
>that, unlike prepositions, they are never stranded (3, 5; cf 6-7) (to my
>knowledge; I have done only preliminary corpus searching).
>
>1 They are away.
>2 They are far away.
>3a How far away is it?
>3b *How far is it away
>
>4 It happened two years ago.
>5a How long ago did it happen?
>5b *How long did it happen ago?
>
>6 They gave it do Chris.
>7 Who did they give it to?
>
>It occurs to me that rather than NP PostP, we might assign a structure
>more
>like DEG Adv, where DEG stands for degree of difference (like the ablative
>of degree of difference in Latin).  Then non-stranding would not
>illustrate
>differential treatment of adpositions (pre- versus post-) but would
>instead
>show something else entirely.  One problem with such an approach is the
>ungrammaticality of (13).
>
>6 It had happened two years before.
>7 How long before had it happened?
>8 They were several feet behind us.
>9 They were behind us.
>10 Two hours later, we decided to leave.
>11 Later, we decided to leave.
>12 Two years ago I took a film class.
>13 *Ago I took a film class.
>
>Finally, if "ago" and "away" should be counted as postpositions, are there
>any others in English that I'm missing?
>
>Any thoughts y'all have on any aspect of this would be greatly
>appreciated.
>I'll post a summary if there's sufficient interest.
>
>Matt Juge
>
>TCU
>Department of English
>TCU Box 297270
>Fort Worth, TX 76129
>817-257-6983