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Which part of speech is "back" in the sentence “then she went back to her secretaire”?

Jason Bassford
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Manal
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    What has your research told you? Cambridge | Macmillan | Lexico/Oxford. Hint: the word describes a verb (went) – Andrew Leach Jun 16 '19 at 09:27
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    Traditional grammar calls it an adverb, but modern grammar calls it a preposition. – BillJ Jun 16 '19 at 10:42
  • @AndrewLeach But we shouldn't use dictionaries for grammatical information, especially parts of speech! – Araucaria - Him Jun 16 '19 at 14:35
  • @araucaria That doesn't stop a bit of research saying "I found this... but ..." – Andrew Leach Jun 16 '19 at 14:40
  • @BillJ, preposition? positioned in front of what? the noun to? – Toothrot Jun 16 '19 at 19:47
  • @Toothrot Prepositions take all kinds of complements, not just NPs. And sometimes no complements at all! Most dictionaries still get this wrong, but here's one that gets it right: link. – BillJ Jun 17 '19 at 06:26
  • @Araucaria. I agree that dictionaries cannot necessarily be relied on for grammatical information. However, descriptive grammars do not all agree on classification and terminology either, prompting the question: Which one should I use? But there are other issues: 1. Most dictionaries are online; descriptive grammars such as CGEL are not. 2. It is much more difficult to find information about individual words in descriptive grammars, assuming that the information exists at all. – Shoe Jun 17 '19 at 07:24
  • @Shoe Actually, many grammars such as CamGEL etc have a lexical index, so it's actually very easy to look them up. However, my point here is that it's no use batting users over the head with "Why didn't you look it up in a dictionary?", when dictionaries are not a good starting point in the first place - which is why I feel it should be ok to ask here, because - as you say - it's not so easy to find good reference grammars on the web. – Araucaria - Him Jun 17 '19 at 07:49
  • @Shoe FWIW, you can check out back here, p144 example 37 in ASIEG – Araucaria - Him Jun 17 '19 at 07:49
  • @Araucaria. Thanks for the link to the book. I have the paper edition, which I think is very good, but it's always useful to have a digital version. – Shoe Jun 17 '19 at 10:21
  • @Araucaria. As to the other issue, dictionaries have hundreds of thousands of words as opposed to the hundreds of words in the lexical indexes of grammar books. So learners are always going to quickly find their word in dictionary and in most cases the part of speech will be accurate. A grammar book such as the CGEL has, for example, over 20 pages or page ranges for the word both. That requires a lot of searching and reading to determine its part of speech in the context the learner is asking about. – Shoe Jun 17 '19 at 10:21
  • @Araucaria. Finally, a question from English teacher to English teacher. What consequence does it have for the learner to be told that back is actually a preposition, not an adverb as her dictionary tells her? – Shoe Jun 17 '19 at 10:25
  • @Shoe Well, where to begin really. The fact is that the confusion between adverbs and prepositions causes so many problems that the horrible knock on effects for students is quite pervasive. Take for example, a problem which I'm sure you've come across with sentences like "I don't like here" or "There is very hot" (For "I don't like it here", or "It is very hot there"). Or how about "His speech is too quickly" versus "He is back" (Here you've got the problem of using an adverb as a complement of non-specifying BE, whereas you can freely use prepositions as shown by back. – Araucaria - Him Jun 17 '19 at 11:13
  • @Shoe There's also the fact that we never teach students that the main intensifying modifiers of spacial and temporal prepositions in English are straight and right - so something they underuse. This contrasts with the fact that very is the typical modifier of adverbs --> Put it very back here versus Walk very far. Etc, etc .... There's also the fact that we use noun measure phrases regularly to modify prepositions, but not adverbs: three miles away but not two months recently and so on. There's lots, lots more. – Araucaria - Him Jun 17 '19 at 11:19
  • @Araucaria. In my ESL setting discussions about what part of speech a word is are rare. Students are comfortable with the concept of usage, which I refer to as single word grammar. So they are satisfied with the explanation that, for example, here cannot function as a subject or object. Part of speech classification adds no value. – Shoe Jun 17 '19 at 11:40
  • @Araucaria. In any case, there is always the danger of circularity. Student: What part of speech is 'back'? Teacher: It's a preposition. Student: How do I know it's a preposition? Teacher: Because you can't say 'He's very back'. Student: _How do I know you can't say 'He's very back'? Teacher: Because 'back' is a preposition Ok, I'm signing off here, but it would be nice to pursue this in chat when I have more time than now. – Shoe Jun 17 '19 at 11:40
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    @BillJ, sounds odd. A preposition is something that is positioned in front of something, so it must have a ''complement''. Or will you tell me this is falling victim to the ''etymological fallacy''? – Toothrot Jun 18 '19 at 11:01

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