'Come on, it's time to go home' here home is an adverb or noun?

Question

I have 2 options. A) Noun B) adverb then what should be the answer.

Traditional grammars would say that home in the sentence above is a noun adverb; modern grammars preposition. — user405662, Mar 22 '21 at 08:48
Derived from a noun. Used as a locative with a movement verb. — John Lawler, Mar 22 '21 at 15:10
It's a directional particle(here used in a distal sense) with semantic weight. Lumping it with either adverbs or prepositions calls for drastic redefining (which some have done and claimed as law). — Edwin Ashworth, Mar 22 '21 at 17:57
See also: Can 'home' be an adjective as well as an adverb or a noun? — Alan Munn, Mar 23 '21 at 03:11

Lawrence · Accepted Answer · 2021-03-22T23:56:04.703

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You can test each possibility by substitution with words that you are confident are nouns, adverbs and so on.

Noun: “it’s time to go * car” - this doesn’t work.

Adverb: “it’s time to go quietly” - this is grammatical, but quietly provides the manner of going while home in the original quote doesn’t.

Preposition: “it’s time to go up” - this is grammatical and carries something of the sense of the original.

So “home” acts as a preposition in your example (as noted by several commenters to your question).

edited Mar 22 '21 at 23:56

answered Mar 22 '21 at 17:04

Lawrence

It doesn’t modify go? What is it related to, in any way, if not go? – Xanne Mar 22 '21 at 21:33
@Xanne Oops, good catch; my mistake. Corrected. – Lawrence Mar 22 '21 at 23:57
@Lawrence— Isn't that what you'd written previously? : It modifies go? – user405662 Mar 23 '21 at 05:57
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@user405662 No, previously I said home didn’t modify go. – Lawrence Mar 23 '21 at 15:14
@Lawrence— I see. So the same holds for Stay home as well, where home is a preposition again, right? And if that's so, what is the new definition of preposition? (I gather from past posts here and elsewhere that it's a fairly new perspective of labeling POS, thanks largely to Otto Jespersen.) – user405662 Mar 23 '21 at 16:53
@user405662 Yes, prepositions normally provide the relative 'position' of one noun to another (e.g. "he was near the fire" - "near" situates him with respect to the fire). "Home" kind of captures both the 'object' and the position. It has a sense of 'to somewhere', with the 'directional' component allowing the 'preposition' label. – Lawrence Mar 24 '21 at 17:17
@user405662 Actually, belay that. There might be a somewhat fuzzy line between adverb and preposition where "home" is concerned. I see that you've started a new question about this, so I'll leave fuller treatment of this to be done there. – Lawrence Mar 25 '21 at 01:53

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