Re: Cases and Prepositions (amongst others)

At 10:23 am -0400 16/6/00, John Cowan wrote:
.....
>I think that "here" (and "there" and "where") have both adverbial and
>pronominal functions, without regard to which came from what.  The
>parallelism between "here" and NPs seems too strong to ignore:
>
>        "It came from there."
>        "From where?"
>        "From the Black Lagoon!"
 "Ça est venu de là."
 "D'où?"
 "De la Lagune Noire!"

Does that make là and où substantives?

>This whole discussion is a good example of the pitfalls of essentialism:
>"It's an adverb!" "It's a pronoun!"  "Adverb!" "Pronoun, you twizot!",
>etc. etc.
>Talking about word functions, rather than about immutable word classes, is
>far less likely to provoke useless controversies.
Basically, I agree. But the original question was about word classes, i.e.
"How can a preposition govern an adverb."  Even if one insists on
maintaining that "here" & "there" are pronouns in English, I think that
it's difficult to maintain the same position when dealing with the Romance
languages.  The words that are traditionally denoted as 'adverbs' are
frequently preceeded by words traditionally labelled "preposition" - far
more so than English is.
---------------------------------------------------------------
At 12:51 pm +0200 16/6/00, Christophe Grandsire wrote:
>At 07:02 15/06/00 +0100, you wrote:
[snip]
>>So what are we saying?
>>(a) prepositions never govern adverbs;
>>(b) so in the phrase 'from here', 'here' is a substantive.
>>(c) why is it a substantive here?
>>(d) because it is governed by a preposition.
>>
>>That IMHO is weak argument & seems like yet another example of applying the
>>norms of _Classical_ Latin to English.
[snip]
>>
>>And what about Spanish 'por aquí'?  Has 'aquí' suddenly transmogrified
>>itself into a pronoun or substantive because it's governed by a preposition?
>>
>
>I agree with you.
Thanks, I was beginning to feel a bit lonely  :)

>French grammarians may be very prescriptivist sometimes,
>they never pretended that prepositions couldn't govern adverbs, because
>then they would have quite a few problems to explain forms like "d'ici",
>"par là", "dès lors"...
Exactly - the Romance languages are replete with such forms.

>I see no difficulty in considering that
>prepositions can govern adverbs. The fact that not all adverbs can be
>freely used with prepositions comes only from their meaning, not from an
>intrisic property shared by all adverbs
I agree.
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At 8:56 am -0700 16/6/00, AcadonBot wrote:
>----- Original Message -----
>From: "Vasiliy Chernov" <bc_@...>
[snip]
>> It seems that English has no clear boundary between adverbs and
>> (pro)nouns for words referring to space and time.
>>
>> My 2¢.   Basilius
>
>Yes. That seems a valid statement IMO. But then,
>English has no clear boundary betweeen lots of
>things. Boundaries are often set, not by the word
>itself, but by articles, particles, context, etc.
Indeed - English seems to me very much like Chinese in this respect; words
can migrate fairly easily from one category to another.  It does mean that
not infrequently a structure can be interpreted by more than one analysis,
especially if one is using traditional Latin-derived grammatical
terminology.

<soap-box>
This is one reason that I, personally, do not like the idea of
part-of-speech notation in an conIAL; it seems to me that one is forcing a
particular speech pattern - essentially Latin-based - onto something I feel
would be better with the flexibility of English & Chinese.
<end of soap-box>
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At 2:21 pm -0500 16/6/00, Thomas R. Wier wrote:
>Raymond Brown wrote:
>
>> At 2:10 am -0500 15/6/00, Thomas R. Wier wrote:
[....]
>> >Except, who's saying "here" was originally an adverb?
>>
>> Chamber's English Dictionary.
[....]
>I mean absolutely no disrespect, but I frankly have little faith in
>lexicography.
>It's not the same thing as linguistics.
Sorry - merely answered a question.

And if one is then to simply ignore lexicographers, it has IMO significant
implications.  While both you & I have a familiarity with English so that
we can make inferences about the function and/or classification of words in
English, it then gets trickier as one turns to other languages.

And the question was: Who saying "here" was _originally_ an adverb?  OK -
if it was originally a pronoun, where is the counter-evidence?

I am not denying that, especially in English, a word that belongs
originally to one category cannot _function_ like another, i.e. that "here"
cannot be used substantively ("The here & now....") or adjectively ("this
here bloke....).  I was asked who said it was _originally_ an adverb; and
all the evidence I have as a poor amateur linguist is that it was
originally an adverb.
[....]
>
>My point was that we know that 'here', 'there' can be used substantively;
>you did not dispute the details of the examples I gave.
Why should I?  See above.

[....]
>
>No, that's not what I meant, ever.  I'm sorry if my original statement to
>Christophe
>was unclear (it was, in retrospect).
It was - and I was coming to Christophe's defense.

Also, while you & I can, if we wish, discuss the function of "here" in
"from here" synchronically with reference to English only, it is IMO
unreasonable to expect Christophe to empty his mind of his French
inheritance do the same.  The Romance languages are, as noted above,
replete with phrases that are traditionally analyzed as prep.+adverb - far
more so than English.

It was, perhaps, unfortunate that Christophe - presumably out of deference
for the large number of anglophones on the list - took his example from
English.  In this case it would, I guess, have been better to take his
examples from his native language:
d'où; d'ici; par ici; par là; dès lors etc., etc.

> I should perhaps alter this to say
>that the underlying part of speech for 'here' is substantive;  I do not
>contest, nor have
>I ever contested, that it is often used superficially as an adverb.
Whereas for me - and it's probably because of my Classical background, my
familiarity with the Romance languages, and my knowing that "here' is
related to Germ. & Dutch: hier; Dan. & Nor: her; Sw. här (I know: all
irrelevant from a synchronist point of view - but I can't blot them out of
my mind) - 'tis the otherway round: "here" is in origin an adverb which may
be used substantively or adjectively as well, of course, adverbially, in
English.

[....]
>of that except for a brief visit by a family friend once).  But I was
>under the impression we were talking about Standard English here,
>and it was on that basis I was making my judgments.
That was certainly not my impression.

Nik's question on 6th June, which began the "from here" thread, was:
"How can a preposition govern an adverb?"

No mention of English, standard or otherwise - indeed it followed a quote
from one of my mails referring to Esperanto.   And in Esperanto a prep. can
certainly be used with an adverb, e.g. de kie; de tie; de hejme etc. The
second words are marked as adverbs by the suffix -e.

On 12th June, Christophe replied: "from here"?

To which on 14th June, Nik replied:
'But "here" isn't an adverb there.  It's a sort of pronoun, meaning "this
place".'
...and you replied:
'Of course, "here" in this case is used substantively, not adverbially.'

I merely felt that Christophe was being rather summarily dismissed and came
to his defense.

It may have been better - indeed, I think it would've kept the thread on a
theoretical level instead of arguing about a phrase in English where words
have a healthy disregard for being categorized - if Christophe had used
examples from his own language.

But can we categorically state that adpositions may not govern adverbs in
any natlang ever?

Ray.




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A mind which thinks at its own expense
will always interfere with language.
                   [J.G. Hamann 1760]
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