Re: Prepositional adjectives?

On Tue, 1 Jun 1999 07:31:25 +0100, "Raymond A. Brown"
<raybrown@...> skribis:

>But 'preposition' has always seemed to me an unsatisfactory word - it
>merely refers to the position of the word, not its function.  But I =
guess
>that after 2000 years of usage, we're not going to change that - so =
we're
>stuch with 'preposition' and 'postposition' for what are essentially the
>same sort of word.  (Can you imagine calling adjective by different =
names
>depending upon whether they preceed their noun - as in English & Chinese=
 -
>or follow their noun - as in Welsh & Arabic !!).
I agree. And even if they were named by its position, I think
"preposition" would be an incorrect name for them, as it seems to mean
a kind of position, not a word. Probably "preparticle" would be
better. But if I was allowed to rename prepositions, I probably would
call them "nominal adverbs" as they function like adverbs which modify
nouns (or equivalent), as opposite to the other adverbs.


Saludos,
Marcos