In
Six questions to ask yourself before making a decision
... is "before" a preposition because it is the beginning of a prepositional phrase? Or is it an adverb since it's followed by a verb? (Or is "making" even a verb, or is it a gerund?!)
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It's a subordinating conjunction introducing the adverbial clause before you make a decision, which is transformed into a participial phrase before making a decision.– John LawlerCommented Aug 26, 2017 at 7:16
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It's a preposition, interpreted in parallel with such a phrase as "ask ... before noon". McCawley discusses the traditional characterization as subordinate conjunction versus Jespersen's analysis as preposition, and M endorses Jespersen (in The Syntactic Phenomena of English).– Greg LeeCommented Aug 28, 2017 at 12:36
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@JohnLawler But only if you believe in subordinating conjunctions. Otherwise it's a preposition!– Araucaria - HimCommented Aug 28, 2017 at 13:57
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Oh, OK. I can live with that, as long as we can have intransitive prepositions along with clausal-object transitive prepositions.– John LawlerCommented Aug 28, 2017 at 18:03
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