Re: Most common irregular verbs?

Tristan McLeay wrote at 2006-01-17 19:55:01 (+1100)
 > Henrik Theiling wrote:
 > > Paul Bennett <paul-bennett@...> writes:
 > >>
 > >>The pan-linguistic definition of an adjective pretty much seems to be
 > >>"anything that is not clearly any other part of speech". I think I
 > >>recall  Comrie giving that definition in _Language Universals and
 > >>Linguistic  Typology_, but I may be wrong.
 > >
 > >
 > > Aha, so quite plainly matching the Lat. translation of 'adjicere':
 > > 'ad' + 'jacere'?  'to throw at'? :-)  To throw the word in question at
 > > just about anything?
 > >
 > > Unsatisfied, I understand. :-)
 >
 > Actually, I thought that was what "adverbs" were, whereas adjectives
 > must modify noun phrases.

I think you're right.

|3.4	Adverbs
|	Adverb is a "catch-all" category.  Any word with semantic
| content (i.e. other than grammatical particles) that is not clearly
| a noun, a verb, or an adjective is often put into the class of
| adverb.
   (Thomas Payne, _Describing Morphosyntax_, page 69)

 >
 > e.g.
 >   Can I have some more, please? "Please" is an adverb.
 >   The ducks headed bush. "Bush" is an adverb. {*}
 >   This is not the sort of thing that I'll put up with. "up" and "with"
 > are adverbs.
 >
 > This is seems "obvious" if the VP is basically the entire sentence
 > except the subject, because then if you have something undefinable
 > undefinably modifying the sentence, it's probably modifying the VP,
 > so it must be an adverb. Something like that.
 >
 > {*} "The ducks headed bush" is mostly non-standard. Apparently it
 > exists in Australian speech, but it sounds awfully odd to me. It
 > means, of course, they went to the bush, where "the bush" is the
 > Australian bush, not a shrub. I think I saw it somewhere on
 > Australian English grammatical oddities described as a new adverb.
 >

Actually I believe you saw it described as a new _preposition_.

http://www.abc.net.au/rn/arts/ling/stories/s693377.htm

Traditionally, of course, prepositions without an object are
classified as adverbs, but this isn't the approach taken by Pullum
(e.g. in the _Cambridge Grammar of the English Language_) - he
explains his position in a follow-up talk here:

http://abc.net.au/rn/arts/ling/stories/lf981212.htm


(links via: http://people.ucsc.edu/~pullum/radiotalks.html )

I wonder what the _CGEL_ says about "ago".  I certainly can't afford a
copy, but perhaps someone here has access to one?