Poznámky k syntaxi předložky před

In this paper, the author looks at the syntax of the preposition 'pred' (in front of) in its temporal uses, where it means 'before' or 'ago'. In particular, he analyzes PPs such as 'pred hodinou', lit. in front of an hour, meaning 'an hour ago', and he argues that while 'an hour' behaves like a complement of the preposition from the perspective of word order and case, semantically it is a measure phrase. The author proposes an analysis in which 'an hour' starts out as a measure phrase, but ends up as a complement as a result of a transformation displacing the adposition to the left of the measure phrase.