Re: OT: ago

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.

And I think that "ago" might not be unique in requiring other words to
modify it, although I can't think of English examples at the moment. I
was thinking that Minza had some, but all I can find are transitive
participles like "ziryli" ("afraid of").