Using the word after as a preposition

The word after can be used as a preposition, an adverb and a conjunction.

When it is used as a preposition, it is followed by a noun.

• I went for a short walk after dinner.
• After the war, he went back to work on his dad’s farm.
• Applications submitted after 6 pm will not be accepted.

When after is used as an adverb, it is not followed by a noun.

• She died on March 5^th and was buried the day after.

After can also be used as a conjunction. As a conjunction after connects two clauses.

• After he finished his studies, he went to America.
• He arrived after everybody had gone home.

In American English, after is often used in telling the time.

• It is ten after six. (US)
• It is ten past six. (GB)

To shout after someone is to shout to them as they leave.

‘Don’t come back!’ she yelled after him.

To clean up after somebody is to clean a mess they have left.

You have to put those toys away. I won’t be cleaning up after you.

To close a door after you is to close it as you leave a place.

Please close the door after you.

When you are after somebody, you are trying to catch them.

The police are after the man who made off with the jewels.

To name a person or thing after someone is to give them the same name.

• He is named after his grandfather. (He and his grandfather have the same name.)
• He is called Christopher, after his uncle.
• She has a university named after her.

I see it as a preposition. Here’s why:

1. Subordinating conjunctions function as markers of subordination, whereas preps (inc «after») function as heads of the constituents they introduce.

2. Unlike subordinating conjunctions, preps have independent meaning (‘an evident semantic content’). In the case of «after», it has a temporal meaning.

3. With items like «after» they uncontroversially occur as preps when they have an NP as complement, and there’s no basis for assigning them to different categories according as they take an NP or a clause — or no complement at all.

Trad grammar has:

after the meeting: preposition + noun

after we arrived: subordinating conjunction + sub clause

I didn’t seen her after: adverb, no complement

This is just a matter of varying complementation, which is commonplace.

Compare verbs:

I know her father: verb + NP

I know that he’s ill: verb + sub clause

I know: verb without complement

Or nouns:

a belief in God: noun + PP

the belief that God exists: noun + clause

her beliefs: noun without complement

Moreover, in all three constructions, «after» takes the same modifiers, e.g. a short while. We need therefore to distinguish «after» from the subordinators «that/whether», and then once we’ve done that «after» clearly belongs with all the other preps. For the record, Jespersen argued for treating «after» the same in all three constructions nearly a hundred years ago.

ADVICE, ADVISE, SUGGEST

You use after, afterwards, and later to talk about things that happen at a time following the time of speaking or following a particular event.

You can use after as a preposition.

1. After dinner she got hold of the President and spoke to him.
2. He resigned after allegations that he was involved in drug-trafficking.

You can also use after as a conjunction.

3. I returned to England only recently, after spending two months in India.
4. His fame grew after he left the hospital.

In expressions like ‘shortly after’ and ‘not long after’, you can use after as an adverb.

5. Douglas came round to see me, and soon after I met him again at a friend’s.
6. Shortly after, Fania called me.

Afterwards can also be used as an adverb when you do not need to mention the particular time or event.

7. Afterwards we went to a night club.
8. You’d better come up to my room afterwards and show me what you’ve got.

You can use later as an adverb to refer to a time or situation that is after the one that you have been talking about, or following the time of speaking.

9. I returned some three or four weeks later.
10. I’ll go round and see Nell later.

You can use all these words after a phrase which mentions a period of time to say when something happens.

11. She wrote about it six years afterwards.
12. Ten minutes later Sutherland grabbed a microphone.
13. …five hundred years after his death.

• The words ‘shortly’, ‘soon’, and ‘long’ can be used with both after and afterwards.

14. He was back in the hotel shortly after six.
15. Soon afterwards, Ira came storming into the clinic.
16. …under a tree known long afterwards as the Queen’s Oak.

• ‘A little’, ‘much’, and ‘not much’ can be used with later.

17. A little later, the faint blue glow of the emergency lights went out.
18. I learned all this much later.

After as a preposition and conjunction

After means ‘later than’ and ‘next in time or place’.

After can be used before a noun phrase (as a preposition):

Shall we have a swim after lunch?

The bank is just after the park, on the left.

After can introduce a clause (as a conjunction):

After I left him a message, he phoned me immediately.

She did voluntary work in a hospital after she graduated.

After or afterwards as an adverb

We can use after as an adverb, but afterwards is more common. When after is used, it is usually as part of an adverb phrase:

They lived happily ever after. (means ‘for ever’)

She had an operation on her leg and afterwards was unable to walk for at least a month.

After: typical error

When after refers to future time, we use the present simple, not the future with shall or will:

I’ll do another course after I finish this one.

Not: … after I will finish …

For those interested in a little info about this site: it’s a side project that I developed while working on Describing Words and Related Words. Both of those projects are based around words, but have much grander goals. I had an idea for a website that simply explains the word types of the words that you search for — just like a dictionary, but focussed on the part of speech of the words. And since I already had a lot of the infrastructure in place from the other two sites, I figured it wouldn’t be too much more work to get this up and running.

The dictionary is based on the amazing Wiktionary project by wikimedia. I initially started with WordNet, but then realised that it was missing many types of words/lemma (determiners, pronouns, abbreviations, and many more). This caused me to investigate the 1913 edition of Websters Dictionary — which is now in the public domain. However, after a day’s work wrangling it into a database I realised that there were far too many errors (especially with the part-of-speech tagging) for it to be viable for Word Type.

Finally, I went back to Wiktionary — which I already knew about, but had been avoiding because it’s not properly structured for parsing. That’s when I stumbled across the UBY project — an amazing project which needs more recognition. The researchers have parsed the whole of Wiktionary and other sources, and compiled everything into a single unified resource. I simply extracted the Wiktionary entries and threw them into this interface! So it took a little more work than expected, but I’m happy I kept at it after the first couple of blunders.

Special thanks to the contributors of the open-source code that was used in this project: the UBY project (mentioned above), @mongodb and express.js.

Currently, this is based on a version of wiktionary which is a few years old. I plan to update it to a newer version soon and that update should bring in a bunch of new word senses for many words (or more accurately, lemma).