Re: Most common irregular verbs?

--- In conlang@yahoogroups.com, Henrik Theiling <theiling@A...>
wrote:

Hi!

>You means 'the year ago' is analysed to be a good noun phrase?!
"The year ago" is not standard English.  One would say "a year
ago."  Think of "ago" as synonymous to "past" or "gone by."

>'The year ago was a good year.'
If you mean year 2005, I would say, "last year was a good year."
If you mean year 2004, I would say, "the year before last was a good
year" or "a year ago we had (was) a good year."

>'A year ago happens before the current year.'  ??
Yes, it does.  A year ago is the year before the present one.

>But adverbs (or adverbials) are often formed by adpostion + noun.
>So that's quite a good reason to call it a postpostion.
To me it doesn't follow that, just because an adverbial can indeed
be formed by an adposition and noun, "ago" must be called a
postposition because it follows a noun.  The subject under
discussion was postposed adjectives.  It seems that adjectives also
can follow nouns.

>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?
By that reasoning it could also be a verb since, in Spanish the
expression uses "hace," literally "it makes":  hace dos semanas, two
weeks ago.  The correspondence is almost perfect.

>What's the justification to call it an adjective here?
My justification is, as usual, the entry in the American Heritage
Dictionary.

The Columbia Guide to Standard American English: "_Ago_ is both
adjective, as in _The murder took place many years ago,_ and adverb,
as in _The murder took place long ago._  It is Standard in both
uses."

Charlie
http://wiki.frath.net/user:caeruleancentaur

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