Re: those irregular prepositions

Yahya Abdal-Aziz wrote at 2006-06-21 00:06:21 (+1000)
 > Hi,
 >
 > In English, we say:
 > * at night
 > * at nightfall
 > * at nighttime
 > * at dusk
 > * at dawn
 > * at noon
 > * at the weekend
 > * at daybreak
 > but
 > * in the daytime
 > * during the day
 > never
 > * at day
 > * at daytime
 >
 > Why is it so?
 >
 > Do you conlangs have any prepositions of
 > similarly quirky distribution?
 >


Well, surely the basic pattern is to use "at" for times conceived of
as events, i.e. punctual, specific times, and "in" or "during" for
extended periods.  Of your examples only "at night" "at nighttime" and
"at the weekend" depart from this pattern*.  Of these, "at nighttime"
strikes me as highly questionable, at least regarding my own speech.
Mark and Tristan have a similar reaction to "at the weekend" (which I
find unobjectionable, though I think I'd be more likely to use one of
the alternatives).


(Incidentally, when you give a list of both correct and incorrect
examples, it's probably better not to bullet-point them with
asterisks, given the linguistic convention of using a prefixed
asterisk to indicate unacceptable or reconstructed forms (e.g. _*at
daytime_).)



* Admittedly, my assessment of whether words like "dusk" are
  semantically punctual may be influenced by the prepositions they
  take, so perhaps there's an element of circular reasoning here.