In traditional grammars, words are grouped into word classes according to various criteria. Some words with idiosyncratic properties, however, are difficult to categorize, for example the lexeme bis. Its description in the grammars of German is inconsistent and mostly inaccurate. This lexeme behaves morphologically and semantically like a preposition, but syntactically it shows a different behavior. Since the syntactic properties of bis also characterize other lexemes, such as ab, seit and von, it seems justified to group them together into a new word class, called the pre-adverb, which is not included among the canonical word classes of German. Through the detailed description of the selected lexemes as pre-adverbs, this article contributes to the descriptive grammar of German.

Keywords: word class classification ‒ Einzelgänger ‒ preposition ‒ pre-adverb ‒ adverbial complement