The After effects of drugs are bad.(preposition)
***** NOT A TEACHER *****
Thank you, Bebe Heart, for asking this question. It forced me to do some research, so I learned something new today. I wanted to share the information with you.
As the teachers told us, "aftereffect" or "after-effect" is a noun. (Only my note: I believe it is a
compound noun. That is, a noun that consists of two or more separate words.)
Here is what I learned from five scholars:
1. The word "after" is
both a
prefix and a
preposition. (Only my note: It is perhaps more accurate to call it a
prefix when it is the first part of a compound noun; if the word "after" stands alone, then it is called a preposition.)
a. Two scholars give these examples of its use as a prefix: aftermath, aftereffect, afternoon.
2. Three other scholars say that the prefix and the preposition "after" both express core [basic] meanings like 'subsequent [what follows] in shock' (aftershock [prefix], after the earthquake [preposition]."
3. Those three scholars add:
But [my emphasis] the preposition also has specialized uses like "in imitation of" (a painter after Michelangelo).
Credit goes to:
The Origins and Development of the English Language (2013) by Algeo and Butcher;
The Oxford Reference Guide to English Morphology (2013) by Bauer, Lieber, and Plag. [Both books accessed through the "books" section of Google.]
