Re: OT: ago

I thought this thread has run its course last week, but it seems to have
been resurrected. Ah well:

Gary Shannon wrote:
> Trying to shoehorn an individual, unique word into
> some artifical category like "adjective" or "adverb"
> just underscores how arbitrary those categories are,
> and how poorly they fit the words of a living
> languages.
Eh??

_All_ grammatical categories, including the so-called "agoative", are
_abstractions_ and therefore artificial. But they are certainly not
arbitrary (except, may be, "agoative"    :)

Nor is 'ago' exactly unique. There are other words that behave in a
similar fashion. Our attention has already been drawn to 'away' as:
He lives three miles away.
She lives far away.

Later in this thread we have 'hence' (not common now) drawn to our
attention:
I will go there three weeks hence.
He will be here not long hence.

(The more common ways of expressing the first sentence are "I will go
there in three weeks from now", "I will go there in three week's time".
The latter is what I would say.

There are others, such as:
It's three feet below.
It is far below.
etc.
etc.


> (It's all exceptions, I tell you, and no
> rules.
Bosh!

Could Gary explain how 'ago' is _shoehorned_ into the adverb category?
What was the problem with the explanation I gave? I just do not
understand what Gary is griping about here.

As for the 'adjective' business, all we have had so far is the quoting
of two authorities that say it is an adjective (namely the AHD and The
Columbia Guide to Standard American English), but *no one* has so far
ventured to explain this classification. Without actually knowing the
reasoning of these two authorities, we are not IMO in a position to
judge how much shoehorning has gone on. Though I must admit all who have
given an analysis of ago phrases on this list have all unanimously
rejected the adjective classification.

I think lumping together assigning 'ago' to the adverb and to adjective
categories as 'shoehorning' shows either a lack of understanding of what
was said in the early part of this list or else a disregard for it.

> (At least no universally applicable rules.))
Well, maybe that is just something to do with the fact that there are a
few thousand natlangs spoken in the world! We know, for example, that
the category adjective is not universal.
==================================

Mark J. Reed wrote:
[snip]

> Sure, parts of speech are fluid -
Exactly!!

Language changes: its phonology changes, its morphology and syntax
changes. I was recently sent copies of wills made by my forebears
way back in the 14th & 15th century. It doesn't take a genius to notice
differences in morphology and syntax. Sure words change lexical
categories (which is what the so-called parts of speech are).

>an "adjective" was originally
> considered a type of noun, words change part of speech (or sprout new
> meanings in other ones, anyway) all the time,
In Latin & classical Greek, there is no clear distinction between noun &
adjective. In fact, in the old classification both what we call 'noun'
and 'adjective' were considered subcategories of the class 'noun'; our
nouns were considered to a sub-class of nouns called 'substantive',
while adjectives were another subclass called 'adjective'. This makes
perfect sense in the context of those languages; but it does not make
the same sense in describing English (any many other languages); indeed,
in some languages it does not make sense to use the lexical category
'adjective' at all.

>and the fact that we
> refer to "prepositions" by their syntactic position instead of their
> semantic role is kinda silly, but parts of speech are nevertheless
> quite useful descriptive categories.
Yes, it is. The problem was that when the term was coined some 2000+
years ago, the vast majority of these things were preposited to NPs. IMO
postposition and adposition (ugh!) suffer from the same silliness. In
"The Loom of Language", Frederick Bodmer calls this category
'directives'. But this term has not caught on, so we still use the
silly, tho traditional, terms. But, I agree with Mark, that it is useful
to have a name for this lexical category for descriptive purposes.

> The fact that they're used
> prescriptively doesn't change that, any more than prescriptive use of
> other grammatical terms does.
Yes, and IMO much confusion is caused by not being clear whether
"grammar" is being used prescriptively or descriptively. I get the
impression by Gary's harping on about 'rules' that he has the
prescriptive use in mind - whereas most of us on the list tend to use
the term descriptively (we use the term at all).

Trask defines _three_ meanings for 'grammar'. When we discuss grammar,
we need to be clear in what sense we are using the term otherwise we're
liable to be talking at cross purposes.

IMO it is generally better to talking about morphology and syntax, and
to consider lexical categories.

> Whatever you call "ago", it's clear that a phrase containing a time
> period + ago is, taken as a whole, an adverb.
Quite so, and any analysis must be consistent with this. I have already
shown how such phrases can be analyzed _either_ by considering 'ago' to
be an adverb _or_ by considering it to be a postposited adposition
('directive'). Neither analysis, as far as I can see, involves any
'shoehorning'.

Applying the principle of Occam's razor (entities should not be
multiplied beyond necessity), I see no need for a term such as
'agoative'. If we go down that track we shall finish up with as many
'parts of speech' as there are individual words. All words are
individual and unique in some way or other!
==================================

Larry Sulky wrote:
 > Not "acome"?

Well, yes, one would expect the complement of 'ago' to be *acome (go ~
come).

 >Well, all right, you've got my vote; "athen" it is.  ---larry

But surely the complement of *athen would be *now, not 'ago'?

In any case, for those who want to use a single word in these time
phrases referring to the future, English _already_ possesses the
perfectly good word "hence". Why do we need to adopt a synonym? I don't
get it.

With 'agoative' and 'athen' we seem to be multiplying entities quite
beyond necessity.
==================================

Gary Shannon wrote:
[snip]
[snip]
 > memorization and recall of habitual cultural word
 > patterns.

"habitual cultural word patterns" - um, and how exactly does one
describe such patterns without recourse to morphology & syntax (even if
you insist on using different terms for 'morphology' and 'syntax')?

And something causes these patterns to be produced & perceived. If you
don't want to call these rules, then what do you call them?

 > And that's why rules will always be a poor
 > fit, and a second-best way to describe language.

I am not clear why you keep on about rules? Are you railing against the
prescriptive grammar of school text books, against theories of
'generative grammar' or what? I am not clear.

--
Ray
==================================
ray@carolandray.plus.com
http://www.carolandray.plus.com
==================================
ENTIA NON SVNT MVLTIPLICANDA
PRAETER NECESSITATEM

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