Q: Postpositions in English?

[John Myhill]

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