Re: Prepositions

Quoting Amber Adams <amber@...>:

> On Sun, Sep 30, 2001 at 12:17:16PM -0500, Thomas R. Wier wrote:
> > What would certainly be *much* smaller is a list of English
> > postpositions -- didn't we determine some time back that
> > English doesn't really have any? I think we agreed that
> > "asunder" is more of an adverb.
>
> What about "ago" ?  And I've always considered " 's " to be
> somewhat postpositional, granted, it's probably a clitic, but
> it's still weird.
You might have a case there for both.  "'s" is certainly clitic,
in that it's perfectly grammatical for most people to say things
like "the Queen of England's crown", where the crown presumably/
traditionally belongs to the Queen, not England. As for its
postpositionality, the analyses I've seen treat it as some sort
of valence-bearing particle, which might just as well be a post-
position. I'm not quite as sure about "ago".

==============================
Thomas Wier <trwier@...>

"If a man demands justice, not merely as an abstract concept,
but in setting up the life of a society, and if he holds, further,
that within that society (however defined) all men have equal rights,
then the odds are that his views, sooner rather than later, are going
to set something or someone on fire." Peter Green, in _From Alexander
to Actium_, on Spartan king Cleomenes III