Re: OT: ago

On Wed, 18 Jan 2006 21:25:09 -0600, Herman Miller <hmiller@...> wrote:

>Harold Ensle wrote:
>> Hello everyone,
>>
>> I had to post something when I saw the following sentences:
>>
>>     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."
>>
>> This may be the worst linguistic analysis I have ever seen...and from
>> an authoritative source as well.
>> "ago" is always an adverb and it always modifies the verb. They seem
>> to be suffering from the delusion that "ago" is modifying "years" in
>> the first sentence and modifying "long" in the second sentence.
>> Actually it is just the opposite. "years" and "long" are modifying "ago".
>> This is why these words precede "ago". Thus "many years" is functioning
>> as an adverb in order to describe another adverb ("ago"). The only
>> oddity is that "many years" has nothing marking it as an adverb (other
>> than its position). But with words of quantity, such marking is
unecessary,
>> since context is sufficient to avoid ambiguity. There are other examples
>> in English of this same process. Consider: "He is three feet taller than
I."
>> Notice that "three feet" is modifying "taller" in that it is telling us
>> how much taller he is. So in this context, "three feet" is clearly acting
>> as an adverb, yet the only sign of this is its preceding position.
>
>I've been thinking about "ago" and similar words like "away"; you can
>say "three feet away" in pretty much the same contexts as "three days
>ago". But then I realized there's a subtle difference between the two;
>"three feet away" is typically accented "three feet AWAY", while in my
>speech "three days ago" is more typically "three DAYS ago", with the
>stress on the noun. I might not notice anything odd about "three days
>AGO", but that's not the way I'd usually say it unless I wanted to
>emphasize the past tense.
>
>I'd still consider it an adverb, but I've often thought of it as the
>closest thing English has to a postposition, and I think the stress
>pattern is one reason for thinking that way. Other adverbs, like "three
>feet ABOVE", and adjectives like "three years OLD", typically take the
>stress to themselves.
Now I think saying it a postposition is not a bad idea. Since it
requires an additional word, I seems it could be defined like a
preposition.  Pre/postpositions are similar to adverbs, e.g. I went
into the house, I went into*. the only difference being the requirement
of an additional word. The reason I did not follow this idea is because
pre/postpositions are invariably complimented by a noun, which in the
case of the second sentence at top "long" is not a noun. It seems that
any additional description is sufficient to allow the usage of "ago".
Since that is contrary to the function of a postposition...and given
the general nature of English as a prepositional language, I think the
best definition (which covers all its uses) would be an adverb with
some limitation on its usage.

Of course "best" is just my opinion....but the Columbia Guide is
definitely messed up.

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