The definition normally given for adverb is similar to the following one:
a word or phrase that modifies or qualifies an adjective, verb, or other adverb or a word-group
Preposition is normally described using the following words:
a word governing, and usually preceding, a noun or pronoun and expressing a relation to another word or element in the clause
The NOAD, for which twice is only an adverb, uses the following examples for twice:
She had been married twice.
The tablets should be taken twice a day.
I'm twice your age.
an engine twice as big as the original
The same dictionary reports the following examples of prepositions:
the man on the platform
she arrived after dinner
What did you do it for
Looking at the examples, "she arrived after dinner" seems similar to "I am twice your age"; using the definition of preposition, I could say that twice express a relation between I and your age, in the same way after expresses a relation between she and dinner.
The man on the platform seem similar to the man twice your age; if on is a preposition on the first phrase, twice should be a preposition in the second one.
Giving the definitions for preposition, and adverb, it seems I could use classify a word as adverb, or preposition.
Are there more restrictive criteria, to distinguish a preposition from an adverb? Is the relation between two words used to be define preposition restricted to a specific set of relations? For example, on in the man on the platform is a preposition because the relation between man and platform is a specific one.
Answer
As retired Professor of Linguistics John Lawler says here:
twice is called an adverb in dictionaries because "adverb" is the traditional wastebasket category.
From this Wiktionary entry on "number words":
In some grammars, number words get assigned a dedicated part of speech, called "number" or "numeral". This part of speech can subsume cardinal numbers and ordinal numbers, and some other classes of number words.
These other words would in English include "double" (adjective), "triple" (adjective), "doubly", "triply", "twice", "thrice".
I've no reason to disagree with this Yahoo Answer to What part of speech is the word after?:
preposition
behind in place or position; following behind: men lining up one after the other.
adverb
behind; in the rear: Jill came tumbling after.
adjective
later in time; next; subsequent; succeeding: In after years we never heard from him.
conjunction
subsequent to the time that: after the boys left.
Consider also my own question on ELU asking What exactly is an “adverb”?, where the answers basically net down to the fact that a word is an adverb only when and if it's used adverbially. Any given word isn't necessarily an adverb all the time; the categorisation attaches to the usage, not the word itself.
I think what all this amounts to is you reach a certain point in classification of "parts of speech" where the process is no longer helpful. Such terminology is a "post-hoc" attempt to describe how we actually use language, but it's an imperfect descriptive framework.
It's therefore my opinion that in a case like this, OP's attempt to narrow down the description so he can unambiguously classify specific "awkward" words as one thing or another is really a lost cause anyway.
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