Talk:online

preposition

Online is a newish compound intransitive preposition along the lines of indoors or downstream.--Brett 13:00, 1 September 2008 (UTC)

• "Online" should also be considered an adverb, for the first example, a preposition must be followed by a noun, however this is not the case in the example sentence. I saw long debates between Brett and Tygrrr on such a problem (i.e. prepostion or adverb?). I, not personally but for some linguistic good reasons, would considered online an adverb, at least in the first example. Nebogipfel 13:09, 1 September 2008 (UTC)

What are those good linguistic reasons? I'm earnestly curious. Take, for example He hasn't been interested until recently. No dictionary that I can find lists until as anything but a preposition or a conjunction. Here it is followed by an adverb, not a noun, but there's no reason to think it's a conjunction. So what is it? The only conclusion that I can come to is that it's a preposition. If this is the case, then clearly prepositions do not need to be followed by nouns. I look forward to your explanation.--Brett 14:03, 1 September 2008 (UTC)

I don't talk about "until", but about "online", I just referred to your debate with Tygrrr to show the question may not be simple to answer. OK I was not accurate enough : you're right, prepositions are not necessarily followed by a noun, but they must anyway be followed by something they form a prepositional group with, which they are always the first element of. Though it's often a noun, it can also be an adverb as in your example. I mean we cannot find a preposition alone, see the etymology of the word... Are there good example with "online" employed as a preposition (this a real question)? Nebogipfel 15:12, 1 September 2008 (UTC)

I take it that you're asking about whether online ever takes an object. As far as I know, it never does because the object is built in (on + line).

With respect to your other points, it is also not true that prepositions are always the first element of a "prepositional group" (usually called a preposition phrase or PP). Consider notwithstanding in the following: Ethical difficulties notwithstanding, he is seen by many as the last of the great crusaders. Other commonly accepted prepositions that can or must be placed after the rest of the phrase include on, ago, aside, and through.

Moreover, prepositions are often stranded as to is in: Who did you give the book to?

The assertion that prepositions are not found alone is based on circular reasoning: prepositions must be part of a group, therefore they cannot be found alone. Argument from etymology is another logical fallacy (see here).--Brett 15:59, 1 September 2008 (UTC)

The true problem is that linguistics and traditional grammars do not agree, I don't mean traditional grammars are false anyway, I just mean traditional grammars do not lean upon scientific analysis of a language, whatever it is (a language that has been written for long time or language that has never been written). Just an example : "notwithstanding", though called a preposition, is at the end of the group, linguists usually call this a "postposition" because of its place (some language such as Turkish or Japanese use exclusively postpositions), etymology can be a logical fallacy in certain cases, particularly when this etymology does not appear clearly anymore, this is not the case here since "preposition" is a quite technical word especially related to grammars that has been made-up with a clear knowledge of the way it was formed : its build-up remains clear even in English, not only in Latin. But if the wiktionary prefers to be based on traditional grammar terminology, I'll understand, it is not Wikipedia after all and the most important are the definitions and uses of words. I hope I've made my thoughts clearer. Nebogipfel 17:11, 1 September 2008 (UTC)

Thank you very much for your thoughts which strike me as quite clear. Indeed, traditional grammar does not lean upon scientific analysis, but merely on tradition. The problem is that a word like preposition comes to us through Latin from Greek PROTHESIS, in other words, through a long tradition that has little to do with the facts of the English language. It may have been used perfectly logically in the classical languages (unfortunately, I know very little about them), but they are not English.

Even in English, the word has been used for almost 1000 years. Aelfric used it in his Old English grammar of Latin. The earliest use in a grammar of English itself seems to have been by William Bullokar in the 16th century who wrote, "An Aduerb iz known from the fowr parts befor going for that it can not be in the vc of any of them, but dependeth on som verb, and iooineth som special signification too the verb, and iz not ruled of any word, nether ruleth any word az a Preposition dooth alway gouern an accusatiu cas otherwyz such spech iz an aduerb."

Notice here that Bullokar claims that prepositions always govern a noun in the accusative case. It would be surprising if the first English grammar got everything right, and we've already shown that this is wrong. So we can say that even though there is a huge weight of tradition behind this concept of a preposition always governing an accusative noun, the tradition is mistakent. The likely source of the error is in a tradition which expects other languages to follow the pattern of Latin. Clearly English doesn't do that, so the whole premise is faulty.--Brett 20:42, 1 September 2008 (UTC)