Fawcett (2010: 204):
The prepositional group has as its pivotal element a preposition, and it corresponds to the meaning of 'minor relationship with thing' at the level of semantics. It is tempting to rename the group with an explicitly functional label (e.g., the 'relator group'), but the formal term "preposition" is so strongly established that we shall not do this. (However, one 'preposition' in English is in fact a 'postposition', i.e., ago in examples such as a year ago.)
Blogger Comments:
[1] To be clear, there are two theoretical anomalies here. The first is the misconstrual of a formal unit, a preposition, as an element of function structure. The second is the misconstrual of a prepositional phrase ("group") as a univariate structure, since Fawcett's 'pivot' corresponds to the Head of a logical structure, thereby construing other elements as Modifiers of a preposition. In SFL Theory, a prepositional phrase is not an expansion of a unit, and so cannot be modelled as a univariate structure.
[2] To be clear, in SFL Theory, the preposition of a prepositional phrase functions interpersonally as a minor Predicator, and experientially as a minor Process.
[3] To be clear, to give formal units such as groups or phrases functional labels would create a theoretical inconsistency.
[4] To be clear, ago is an adverb, and in terms of SFL Theory, in the case of a year ago it serves as the Qualifier of a nominal group:
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