What is the basis for calling HOME a preposition?

Question

I have gone through many a post here and elsewhere that treats home in such sentences as

Stay home.

Go home.

prepositions.

Admittedly, this is a fairly new perspective of looking at the POS, thanks largely to Otto Jespersen. However, beyond a smattering of information about this new approach to classify the POS, nothing more is to be found anywhere on the internet. Maybe, I can't zero in on the right information.

My question then is what makes home a special word that we treat it, and not other such words (say, factory, store, shop, etc.), as a preposition? Could it be that such sentences as above became idiomatic through word of mouth and forced a novel classification of home? And how does this change the definition of a preposition, which traditional grammar defines as: A word that shows in what relation a noun or a pronoun stands to other elements of a clause or a sentence.

Does this answer your question? Difference between 'went home' and 'went to home' This explains that 'he went home' say is a relict of, essentially, 'he went to-home' where 'to-home' is my attempt to show the (dative) case-marked original. The dative now has the same form as the usual noun, so there is really a disguised prepositional phrase. // 'Intransitive prepositions' are posited by Jespersen et al, but they're not the only explanation of some strings, and not one I like. — Edwin Ashworth, Mar 24 '21 at 15:29
@BillJ https://www.englishforums.com/English/AdverbialObjectives/bvwmv/post.htm — Greybeard, Mar 24 '21 at 15:32
It is not at all clear how this question, which is about the classification of home when it is used without to, is a duplicate of the question about the differences between its use with and without to. The only answer to the other question (which is, incidentally, closed) declares (plausibly, so far as I am concerned) that home without to is an adverbial objective, but it doesn't contain any argument against its being a preposition, which is what the OP of this question would be interested to see. — jsw29, Mar 25 '21 at 17:07
@jsw29: Precisely! While I defer to the superior knowledge of the members hereabouts, I must admit that this discussion, more than addressing the meat of the question, has segued into an amorphous philosophical discussion of sorts. — user405662, Mar 25 '21 at 17:28
The question is about the word class (POS) of "home". I've no idea what you mean by 'adverbial objective', but I can tell you that adverbial is a function term, not a category one, so it is not comparable with preposition. — BillJ, Mar 25 '21 at 17:38
Other (better?) dup targets: Why does CGEL call “home”, “abroad”, “here”, and “there” prepositions instead of adverbs as dictionaries say? and Is the word "home" never an adverb? — Scott - Слава Україні, Mar 25 '21 at 19:31

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered Mar 24 '21 at 17:17

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Here's my take:The expression "go home" being elliptical, "home" takes on the meaning of the missing preposition (hence its name). Pseudogapping begets semantic void. [https://www.thoughtco.com/ellipsis-grammar-and-rhetoric-1690640][1]

answered Mar 24 '21 at 17:17

Aluna

115

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Is 'pseudogapping' an artifact of this rhetorical theory? There's an actual syntactic rule known as "gapping", that relates Bill ordered noodles, and Mary ordered rice to Bill ordered noodles, and Mary rice. It deletes the second verb when both are identical but the subjects and objects are not. This words backwards in OV languages like Japanese, where it deletes the first, not the second, in this situation. The Japanese would be something like 'Bill noodles and Mary rice ordered', since Japanese puts the verb last. Rightward vs leftward gapping is a diagnostic trait. – John Lawler Mar 24 '21 at 19:21
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Pseudogapping? Ellipsis? With 'go home', it's just that the dative form of the original has merged with the nominative. – Edwin Ashworth Mar 24 '21 at 20:12

What is the basis for calling HOME a preposition?

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