Re: OT: ago

Mark J. Reed wrote:

> Whatever you call "ago", it's clear that a phrase containing a time
> period + ago is, taken as a whole, an adverb.   Adjectives can't turn
> a noun phrase into an adverb, so it's clearly not an adjective.
> Prepositions can turn a noun phrase into an adverb - that's their
> primary job, in fact - but ago isn't positioned pre the noun phase.
> This is where I think the fact that we call them "prepositions" is
> kinda lame.  We should describe what they do, not where they sit.  But
> in lieu of such a category word, "postposition" will do: something
> that works like a preposition but goes after its object instead of
> before it.
Such beasts are standardly called "adpositions", actually. So you could
say most of the (rather frequent) adpositions in English are
prepositions, but there are some words (mostly "ago") which could be
described as postpositions. OTOH, the adpositions of Hungarian are
usually postpositions.

--
Tristan.