Re: Most common irregular verbs?

Hi!

caeruleancentaur <caeruleancentaur@...> writes:
> --- In conlang@yahoogroups.com, Jim Henry <jimhenry1973@G...> wrote:
>...
> >You might also have a handful of common adpositions appear in the
> >opposite order from the rest, e.g. mostly prepositional but with a
> >few common postpositions (e.g. English "ago") or vice versa.  Or
> >most adpositions take nouns in a certain case, and a few rregularly
> >take some other case.
>
> As I understand it, "ago" is not a postposition.  It is an
> adjective postposed.
You means 'the year ago' is analysed to be a good noun phrase?!

'The year ago was a good year.'   ??
'A year ago happens before the current year.'  ??

I'm a bit confused.

> It can also be an adverb as in "It happened long ago."  But it is
> never a postposition.  ...
But adverbs (or adverbials) are often formed by adpostion + noun.  So
that's quite a good reason to call it a postpostion.

It is perceived very postpositional to me.  An English phrase that
goes 'X ago' is translated into German as 'vor X' -- the
correspondence is almost perfect.  And as an ago-phrase is used as an
adverbial, I'd strongly consider to be 'ago' to be postpositional, no?
What's the justification to call it an adjective here?

  'He returned three years ago.'
  'He returned after three years.'
  'He returned by bike.'

??

**Henrik

--
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