Talk:Postposition
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I certainly see the logic to calling "ago" a postposition, but something should probably be said about how not everyone labels it as such. Webster's calls it an "adjective or adverb", while the OED lists "participial adjective" and "adverb". (At least according to the OED, "ago" is only an adverb in the case of "long ago".) Is this just one of those cases about which people are never going to agree? --Ryguasu 06:01 Mar 5, 2003 (UTC)
I'm removing the following, because I'm fairly certain the example given is not an example of the phenomenon described:
- in everyday speach, some prepositions are used as postpositions. Do you know what I'm getting at?
"At" here is not a postposition. The claim that it is one is apparently due to the fact that it comes at the end of the sentence. However, this is irrelevant to whether or not a word (even one that would otherwise be a preposition) is a postposition. What is relevant is whether or not a word immediately follows and modifies a word or phrase. And "at" is not modifying any of the words or phrases immediately preceding it.
I think any mainstream linguist will tell you, in fact, that "at" in this sentence is a boring old preposition. It does serve as a modifier here, but what it is modifying is a silent word (or "trace") following the "at". For more information, look up "wh-movement" in an introductory linguistics text. (Wikipedia, unfortunately, seems not to have any relevant articles.)
--Ryguasu 13:25, 1 Sep 2003 (UTC)
You're right; at here IS a preposition, just one which has had its referent moved out of its normal position. There are two reasons for this:
- The word it modifies is "what". English is not what is called a wh-in-situ language, that is, one which keeps its question words in the place where the answer would be expected to go (Inuktitut is a wh-in-situ language: one might ask something like You didn't understand what? in Inuktitut). The question You are doing what? is unnatural in English; the wh-word (here, what) moves to the front of the sentence. The same thing happens in the sentence above: Do you see I'm getting at what sounds unnatural or worse.
- If at were a postposition, it would be modifying a verb, in which case it would be a verbal modifier, not a postposition.
I've noticed in the speech of a couple of my Australian friends the word ho being used as a directional postposition in exclamatory sentences, derived from the phrase forward ho (viz. let's go forward). For example, Library ho! means To the library!. I'm not saying it's common, mind you, nor that it is necessarily good English. It's not part of the Australian speech as a whole. However, in this discussion of postpositions in English, I thought that it would be interesting to note. thefamouseccles 22:45 23 Oct 2003 (UTC)
- That's an interesting anecdote. I've asked my Aussi girlfriend though, and she's never heard of it. — Chameleon 12:03, 3 Jun 2005 (UTC)