Adpositions are aclass of words used to express spatial or temporal relations (in, under, towards, behind, ago, etc.) or mark varioussemantic roles (of, for).[1] The most common adpositions areprepositions (which precede their complement) andpostpositions (which follow their complement).
An adposition typically combines with anoun phrase, this being called itscomplement, or sometimesobject.English generally has prepositions rather than postpositions – words such asin, under andof precede their objects, such as "in England", "under the table", "of Jane" – although there are a few exceptions includingago andnotwithstanding, as in "three days ago" and "financial limitations notwithstanding". Some languages that use a different word order have postpositions instead (likeTurkic languages) or have both types (likeFinnish). Thephrase formed by an adposition together with its complement is called anadpositional phrase (or prepositional phrase, postpositional phrase, etc.). Such a phrase can function as agrammatical modifier orcomplement in a wide range of types of phrases.
A less common type of adposition is thecircumposition, which consists of two parts that appear on each side of the complement. Other terms sometimes used for particular types of adposition includeambiposition,inposition andinterposition. Some linguists use the wordpreposition in place ofadposition regardless of the applicable word order.[2]
The wordpreposition comes fromLatin:prae- prefix (pre- prefix) ("before") andLatin:ponere ("to put"). This refers to the situation in Latin andGreek (and inEnglish), where such words are placed before their complement (except sometimes in Ancient Greek), and are hence "pre-positioned".
In some languages, includingSindhi,Hindustani,Turkish,Hungarian,Korean, andJapanese, the same kinds of words typically come after their complement. To indicate this, they are calledpostpositions (using the prefixpost-, from Latinpost meaning "behind, after"). There are also some cases where the function is performed by two parts coming before and after the complement; this is called acircumposition (from Latincircum- prefix "around").
In some languages, for exampleFinnish, some adpositions can be used as both prepositions and postpositions.
Prepositions, postpositions and circumpositions are collectively known asadpositions (using the Latin prefixad-, meaning "to"). However, some linguists prefer to use the well-known and longer-established termpreposition in place ofadposition, irrespective of position relative to the complement.[2]
An adposition typically combines with exactly onecomplement, most often anoun phrase (or, in a different analysis, adeterminer phrase). In English, this is generally a noun (or something functioning as a noun, e.g., agerund), together with itsspecifier andmodifiers such asarticles,adjectives, etc. The complement is sometimes called theobject of the adposition. The resultingphrase, formed by the adposition together with its complement, is called anadpositional phrase or prepositional phrase (PP) (or for specificity, a postpositional or circumpositional phrase).
An adposition establishes agrammatical relationship that links its complement to another word or phrase in the context. It also generally establishes asemantic relationship, which may be spatial (in,on,under, ...), temporal (after,during, ...), or of some other type (of,for,via, ...). TheWorld Atlas of Language Structures treats a word as an adposition if it takes a noun phrase as a complement and indicates the grammatical or semantic relationship of that phrase to the verb in the containing clause.[3]
Some examples of the use of English prepositions are given below. In each case, the prepositional phrase appears initalics, the preposition within it appears inbold, and the preposition'scomplement isunderlined. As demonstrated in some of the examples, more than one prepositional phrase may act as anadjunct to the same word.
In the last of these examples the complement has the form of an adverb, which has beennominalised to serve as a noun phrase; seeDifferent forms of complement, below. Prepositional phrases themselves are sometimes nominalized:
An adposition may determine thegrammatical case of its complement. In English, the complements of prepositions take theobjective case where available (from him, not *from he). InKoine Greek, for example, certain prepositions always take their objects in a certain case (e.g., ἐν always takes its object in the dative), while other prepositions may take their object in one of two or more cases, depending on the meaning of the preposition (e.g., διά takes its object in the genitive or the accusative, depending on the meaning). Some languages have cases that are used exclusively after prepositions (prepositional case), or special forms ofpronouns for use after prepositions (prepositional pronoun).
The functions of adpositions overlap with those of case markings (for example, the meaning of the English prepositionof is expressed in many languages by agenitive case ending), but adpositions are classed assyntactic elements, while case markings aremorphological.
Adpositions themselves are usuallynon-inflecting ("invariant"): they do not have paradigms of the form (such as tense, case, gender, etc.) the same way that verbs, adjectives, and nouns can. There are exceptions, though, such as prepositions that have fused with a pronominal object to forminflected prepositions.
The following properties are characteristic of most adpositional systems:
As noted above, adpositions are referred to by various terms, depending on their position relative to the complement.
While the termpreposition sometimes denotes any adposition, its stricter meaning refers only to one that precedes its complement. Examples of this, from English, have been given above; similar examples can be found in many European and other languages, for example:
In certain grammatical constructions, the complement of a preposition may be absent or may be moved from its position directly following the preposition. This may be referred to aspreposition stranding (see alsobelow), as in "Whom did you gowith?" and "There's only one thing worse than being talkedabout." There are also some (mainly colloquial) expressions in which a preposition's complement may be omitted, such as "I'm going to the park. Do you want to comewith [me]?", and the FrenchIl fait trop froid, je ne suis pas habilléepour ("It's too cold, I'm not dressedfor [the situation].")The bolded words in these examples are generally still considered prepositions because when they form a phrase with a complement (in more ordinary constructions) they must appear first.
Apostposition follows its complement to form a postpositional phrase. Examples include:
Some adpositions can appear either before or after their complement:
An adposition like the above, which can be either a preposition or a postposition, can be called anambiposition.[5] However,ambiposition may also be used to refer to a circumposition (see below),[6] or to a word that appears to function as a preposition and postposition simultaneously, as in theVedic Sanskrit construction (noun-1)ā (noun-2), meaning "from (noun-1) to (noun-2)".[7]
Whether a language has primarily prepositions or postpositions is seen as an aspect of itstypological classification, and tends to correlate with other properties related tohead directionality. Since an adposition is regarded as thehead of its phrase, prepositional phrases are head-initial (or right-branching), while postpositional phrases are head-final (or left-branching). There is a tendency for languages that feature postpositions also to have other head-final features, such asverbs that follow their objects; and for languages that feature prepositions to have other head-initial features, such asverbs that precede their objects. This is only a tendency, however; an example of a language that behaves differently isLatin, which employs mostly prepositions, even though it typically places verbs after their objects.
Acircumposition consists of two or more parts, positioned on both sides of the complement. Circumpositions are very common inPashto andKurdish. The following are examples fromNorthern Kurdish (Kurmanji):
Various constructions in other languages might also be analyzed as circumpositional, for example:
Most such phrases, however, can be analyzed as having a different hierarchical structure (such as a prepositional phrase modifying a following adverb). The Chinese example could be analyzed as a prepositional phrase headed bycóng ("from"), taking thelocative noun phrasebīngxīang lǐ ("refrigerator inside") as its complement.
Aninposition is a rare type of adposition that appears between parts of a complex complement. For example, in the native CalifornianTimbisha language, the phrase "from a mean cold" can be translated using the word order "cold from mean"—the inposition follows the noun but precedes any followingmodifiers that form part of the samenoun phrase.[8] The Latin wordcum is also commonly used as an inposition, as in the phrasesumma cum laude, meaning "with highest praise", lit. "highest with praise".
The terminterposition has been used[9] for adpositions in structures such aswordfor word, Frenchcoupsur coup ("one after another, repeatedly"), and Russian другс другом ("one with the other"). This is not a case of an adposition appearing inside its complement, as the two nouns do not form a single phrase (there is no phrase *word word, for example); such uses have more of acoordinating character.
Preposition stranding is asyntactic construct in which a preposition occurs somewhere other than immediately before its complement. For example, in the English sentence "What did you sit on?" the prepositionon haswhat as its complement, butwhat ismoved to the start of the sentence, because it is aninterrogative word. This sentence is much more common and natural than the equivalent sentence without stranding: "On what did you sit?" Preposition stranding is commonly found inEnglish,[10] as well asNorth Germanic languages such asSwedish. Its existence inGerman is debated. Preposition stranding is also found in someNiger–Congo languages such as Vata and Gbadi, and in some North American varieties ofFrench.
Some prescriptive English grammars teach that prepositions cannot end a sentence, although there isno rule prohibiting that use.[11][12] Similar rules arose during the rise of classicism, when they were applied to English in imitation of classical languages such as Latin.Otto Jespersen, in hisEssentials of English Grammar (first published 1933), commented on this definition-derived rule: "...nor need a preposition (Latin:praepositio) stand before the word it governs (go the foolsamong (Sh[akespeare]); What are you laughingat?). You might just as well believe that all blackguards are black or that turkeys come from Turkey; many names have either been chosen unfortunately at first or have changed their meanings in the course of time."[13]
Simple adpositions consist of a single word (on,in,for,towards, etc.). Complex adpositions consist of a group of words that act as one unit. Examples of complex prepositions in English includein spite of,with respect to,except for,by dint of, andnext to.
The distinction between simple and complex adpositions is not clear-cut. Many complex adpositions are derived from simple forms (e.g.,with + in →within,by + side →beside) throughgrammaticalisation. This change takes time, and during the transitional stages, the adposition acts in some ways like a single word, and in other ways like a multi-word unit. For example, currentGerman orthographic conventions recognize the indeterminate status of certain prepositions, allowing two spellings:anstelle/an Stelle ("instead of"),aufgrund/auf Grund ("because of"),mithilfe/mit Hilfe ("by means of"),zugunsten/zu Gunsten ("in favor of"),zuungunsten/zu Ungunsten ("to the disadvantage of"),zulasten/zu Lasten ("at the expense of").[14]
The distinction between complex adpositions and free combinations of words is not a black-and-white issue: complex adpositions (in English, "prepositional idioms") can be more fossilized or less fossilized. In English, this applies to a number of structures of the form "preposition + (article) + noun + preposition", such asin front of,for the sake of.[15] The following characteristics are good indications that a given combination is "frozen" enough to be considered a complex preposition in English:[16]
Marginal prepositions are prepositions that have affinities with other word classes, most notably participles.[17] Marginal prepositions behave like prepositions but derive from other parts of speech. Some marginal prepositions in English includebarring,concerning,considering,excluding,failing,following,including,notwithstanding,regarding, andrespecting.
In descriptions of some languages, prepositions are divided intoproper (oressential) andimproper (oraccidental). A preposition is called improper if it is some other part of speech being used in the same way as a preposition. Examples of simple and complex prepositions that have been so classified includeprima di ("before") anddavanti (a) ("in front of") inItalian,[18] andergo ("on account of") andcausa ("for the sake of") inLatin.[19] In reference toAncient Greek, however, an improper preposition is one that cannot also serve as aprefix to averb.[20]
As noted above, adpositions typically havenoun phrases as complements. This can includenominal clauses and certain types ofnon-finite verb phrase:
The wordto when it precedes theinfinitive in English is not a preposition, but rather is a grammaticalparticle outside of any mainword class.
In other cases, the complement may have the form of an adjective oradjective phrase, or an adverbial. This may be regarded as a complement representing a differentsyntactic category, or simply as an atypical form of noun phrase (seenominalization).
In the last example, the complement of the prepositionfrom is in fact another prepositional phrase. The resulting sequence of two prepositions (from under) may be regarded as acomplex preposition; in some languages, such a sequence may be represented by a single word, as Russian из-подiz-pod ("from under").
Some adpositions appear to combine with two complements:
It is more commonly assumed, however, thatSammy and the following predicate forms asmall clause, which then becomes the single complement of the preposition. (In the first example, a word such asas may be considered to have beenelided, which, if present, would clarify the grammatical relationship.)
Adpositions can be used to express a wide range ofsemantic relations between their complement and the rest of the context. The relations expressed may be spatial (denoting location or direction), temporal (denoting position in time), or relations expressing comparison, content, agent, instrument, means, manner, cause, purpose, reference, etc.
Most common adpositions are highlypolysemous (they have various different meanings). In many cases, a primary, spatial meaning becomes extended to non-spatial uses bymetaphorical or other processes. Because of the variety of meanings, a single adposition often has many possible equivalents in another language, depending on the exact context. This can cause difficulties in foreignlanguage learning. Usage can also vary between dialects of the same language (for example,American English hason the weekend, whereasBritish English usesat the weekend).
In some contexts (as in the case of somephrasal verbs) the choice of adposition may be determined by another element in the construction or be fixed by the construction as a whole. Here the adposition may have little independent semantic content of its own, and there may be no clear reason why the particular adposition is used rather than another. Examples of such expressions are:
Prepositions sometimes mark roles that may be considered largely grammatical:
Spatial meanings of adpositions may be eitherdirectional orstatic. A directional meaning usually involves motion in a particular direction ("Kay wentto the store"), the direction in which something leads or points ("A pathinto the woods"), or the extent of something ("The fog stretchedfrom Londonto Paris"). A static meaning indicates only a location ("at the store", "behind the chair", "on the moon"). Some prepositions can have both uses: "he satin the water" (static); "he jumped in the water" (probably directional). In some languages, thecase of the complement varies depending on the meaning, as with several prepositions inGerman, such asin:
In English and many other languages, prepositional phrases with static meaning are commonly used aspredicative expressions after acopula ("Bob is at the store"); this may happen with some directional prepositions as well ("Bob is from Australia"), but this is less common. Directional prepositional phrases combine mostly with verbs that indicate movement ("Jay is going into her bedroom", but not *"Jay is lying down into her bedroom").
Directional meanings can be further divided intotelic andatelic. Telic prepositional phrases imply movement all the way to the endpoint ("she ran to the fence"), while atelic ones do not ("she ran towards the fence").[21]
Static meanings can be divided intoprojective andnon-projective, where projective meanings are those whose understanding requires knowledge of the perspective or point of view. For example, the meaning of "behind the rock" is likely to depend on the position of the speaker (projective), whereas the meaning of "on the desk" is not (non-projective). Sometimes the interpretation is ambiguous, as in "behind the house," which may mean either at the natural back of the house or on the opposite side of the house from the speaker.[22]
Some languages feature inflected adpositions—adpositions (usually prepositions) marked for grammatical person and/or grammatical number to give meanings such as "on me," "from you," etc. In the Indo-European languages this phenomenon is mostly confined to theCeltic languages likeWelsh andIrish.Polish also allows some degree of combining prepositions with pronouns in the third person.[23]
The majority of Welsh prepositions can be inflected. This is achieved by having a preposition such aso ('of/from') + a linking element; in the case ofo this is-hon- + the assimilated pronoun element, resulting inohon- being the preposition's "stem" form. It is common in speech for the pronoun to be present after the preposition, but it can be omitted. Unless used with a pronoun the form is alwayso and not the "stem", e.g.dw i'n dodo Gymru –'I comefrom Wales',gormodo gwrw –'too much (of) beer'.
The following table gives the inflected forms of the prepositiono ('of/from'). The optional pronouns that follow the inflected forms are given in parentheses.
| Singular | Plural | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| 1st Person | ohonof (i), ohono (i) –'of/from me' | ohonon (ni) –'of/from us' | |
| 2nd Person | ohonot (ti) –'of/from you' | ohonoch (chi) –'of/from you' | |
| 3rd Person | Masculine | ohono (fe/fo) –'of/from him/it' | ohonyn (nhw) –'of/from them' |
| Feminine | ohoni (hi) –'of/from her/it' | ||
Cymerodd ef hiohonof –'he took itfrom me'.
Inflected prepositions are found inSemitic languages, includingHebrew,[24]Arabic,Assyrian Neo-Aramaic andAmharic.
For example, the Arabic prepositionعلى (/ʕalaː)'on' inflects asعلَيَّ (/ʕalajːa/)'on me',علَيْكَ) (/ʕalajka/)'on youM.SG)',علَيْهِ (/ʕalajhi/)'on him', etc.
SomeIranic languages, includingPersian, have developed inflected prepositions. For example, Persianaz u'from him/her' becomesazaš;bā šomā'with youPL' becomesbāhātun.
InIberian Romance languages such asSpanish andPortuguese, the prepositioncon orcom'with' has special forms incorporating certain pronouns (depending on the language). For example, in Spanish andAsturianconmigo means'with me'. Historically, this developed from the Latin use ofcum'with' after a pronoun, as inmecum'with me'.
Bororo, an indigenous language of Brazil, uses postpositions in all contexts:tori ji'about the mountains'. When these modify a pronoun rather than a full noun, the phrase contracts into an inflected postposition[25] (and therefore looks like a pronominal prefix, rather than a suffix as in the examples above:bagai'for',i-wagai'for me').
There are often similarities in form between adpositions andadverbs. Some adverbs are derived from the fusion of a preposition and its complement (such asdownstairs, fromdown (the) stairs, andunderground, fromunder (the) ground). Some words can function both as adverbs and as prepositions, such asinside,aboard,underneath (for instance, one can say "go inside", with adverbial use, or "go inside the house", with prepositional use). Such cases are analogous to verbs that can be used eithertransitively or intransitively, and the adverbial forms might therefore be analyzed as "intransitive prepositions". This analysis[26] could also be extended to other adverbs, such ashere (this place),there (that place),afterward, etc., even though these never take complements.
Many Englishphrasal verbs containparticles that are used adverbially, even though they mostly have the form of a preposition (such words may be calledprepositional adverbs). Examples areon incarry on,get on, etc., andover intake over,fall over, and so on. The equivalents inDutch andGerman areseparable prefixes, which also often have the same form as prepositions: for example, Dutchaanbieden and Germananbieten (both meaning "to offer") contain the separable prefixaan/an, which is also a preposition meaning "on" or "to".
Some words can be used both as adpositions and assubordinating conjunctions:
It would be possible to analyze such conjunctions (or even other subordinating conjunctions) as prepositions that take an entireclause as a complement.
In some languages, including a number ofChinese varieties, many of the words that serve as prepositions can also be used asverbs. For instance, inStandard Chinese, 到dào can be used in either a prepositional or a verbal sense:
Because of this overlap, and the fact that a sequence of prepositional phrases and verb phrases often resembles aserial verb construction, Chinese prepositions (and those of other languages with similar grammatical structures) are often referred to ascoverbs.
As noted in previous sections, Chinese can also be said to have postpositions, although these can be analyzed as nominal (noun) elements. For more information, see the article onChinese grammar, particularly the sections oncoverbs andlocative phrases.
Somegrammatical case markings have a similar function to adpositions; a case affix in one language may be equivalent in meaning to a preposition or postposition in another. For example, in English, the agent of apassive construction is marked by the prepositionby, while inRussian it is marked by the use of theinstrumental case. Sometimes such equivalences exist within a single language; for example, thegenitive case inGerman is often interchangeable with a phrase using the prepositionvon (just as in English, the prepositionof is often interchangeable with thepossessive suffix's).
Adpositions combinesyntactically with their complement, whereas case markings combine with a nounmorphologically. In some instances it may not be clear which applies; the following are some possible means of making such a distinction:
Even so, a clear distinction cannot always be made. For example, the post-nominal elements inJapanese andKorean are sometimes called case particles and sometimes postpositions. Sometimes they are analyzed as two different groups because they have different characteristics (e.g., the ability to combine with focus particles), but in such analysis, it is unclear which words should fall into which group.
Turkish,Finnish andHungarian have both extensive case-marking and postpositions, but there is evidence to help distinguish the two:
In these examples, the case markings form a word with their hosts (as shown byvowel harmony, other word-internal effects and agreement of adjectives in Finnish), while the postpositions are independent words. As is seen in the last example, adpositions are often used in conjunction with case affixes – in languages that have a case, a given adposition usually takes a complement in a particular case, and sometimes (as has been seenabove) the choice of the case helps specify the meaning of the adposition.
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