Re: Cases and Prepositions (amongst others)

At 07:02 15/06/00 +0100, you wrote:
>>
>>> At 21:09 12/06/00 -0400, you wrote:
>>> >
>>> >How can a preposition govern an adverb?
>>>
>>> "From here"?
>>
>>Of course, "here" in this case is used substantively, not adverbially.
>
>Sorry, gentleman, but this looks to mean horribly like a "vicious circle"
>argument.
>
>"here" is normally classed as an adverb.
>
>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.
>
>I say 'Classical' since we know well that in spoken Latin prepositions were
>freely attached to adverbs, e.g.
>de unde --> Fr. dont; Sp. donde; Port. donde
>de intus --> Fr. dans (originally an adverb)
>etc.
>
>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. 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"... 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 (it's such a patchwork category you
know, where you find many things which are quite different - "very" and
"here" are both considered adverbs if I'm not mistaken, yet they have very
little in common, the first being a modifier of adjectives and other
adverbs, the second being a free word corresponding to the whole noun
phrase "(at) this place" -).

                                                Christophe Grandsire
                                                |Sela Jemufan Atlinan C.G.

"Reality is just another point of view."

homepage : http://rainbow.conlang.free.fr
(ou : http://www.bde.espci.fr/homepages/Christophe.Grandsire/index.html)