Adposition

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Adposition is a grammar term used to summarize a class of words whose best-known representatives are prepositions . These can be defined as words that are typically unchangeable, give a case to exactly one addition and have a very schematic, often only grammatical meaning. Such words may appear before or after their supplements so in the narrow sense each pre positions or post positions to be. The term adposition was coined to have a general term for these different cases; however, the term preposition is often generalized in a sense that it also includes corresponding words in other positions. Seen in this way, adposition is a more precise term for “preposition in a broader sense.” (However, P is always used as a category symbol in syntax theory .)

The languages ​​of the world mostly have either prepositions or postpositions; The German , however, is an example of a language with a mixed portfolio.

Types of adpositions

The subspecies of adpositions are classified according to the position relative to their complement:

  • Preposition (in the narrower sense; also: preceding preposition ): In the prepositional phrase , the preposition precedes, the addition follows:
in the bakery
at the train station
during the descent
from the railroad track
The preposition is widespread in the languages ​​of Europe.
  • Postposition (also: trailing preposition ): In the postpositional phrase , the supplement is put in front:
for the sake of the children
  • In contrast, an ambiposition is not a separate type of position, but is an adposition that can appear either as a preposition or as a postposition:
the child because , because of the child
  • In addition, there are also circumpositions in German (also: prepositions with braces ). These are multi-part expressions that surround the complement on both sides, but as a whole have the same function as a single preposition:
for God's sake
from that point on

Some adpositions originally emerged from complex phrases, the wording of which solidified over time (whereby the meaning of the noun they contained usually faded), so that they can be viewed as compound adpositions:

due to the storm
instead of the old strategy

There are also words that are identical to adpositions, but belong to a different (possibly inflected) part of speech. The meanings of these words may be related to each other. The word ab is used not only as a preposition, but also as a particle (in the narrower sense):

as a preposition: from this line
as a particle (in the function of a predicative ): The branch is down .

Adpositions in the language typology

Relationships with word order types

Transitions between adpositions and cases

In the languages ​​of the world it has been shown that some of the languages ​​use case markings where another part uses adpositions, that is, the difference between the two strategies is often only expressed in the morphology , but not in the function ( semantics ). Some contemporary language typologists therefore use the English term flag or flagging ("flag" or "flagging") to summarize both phenomena in terms of their semantics under one umbrella term.

Differentiation of similar words

The word apposition has the same Latin origin ( ad = 'at', positio from ponere = 'to set'; here only with the assimilation of ad- to "ap-"), but designates a completely different grammatical term.

Web links

Wiktionary: Adposition  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Based on the definition in: Dennis Kurzon & Silvia Adler: Introduction In: D. Kurzon & S. Adler (eds.): Adpositions: Pragmatic, semantic and syntactic perspectives. John Benjamin, Amsterdam 2008, p. 2.
  2. ↑ Martin Haspelmath: Argument marking in ditransitive alignment types . In: Linguistic Discovery . Vol. 3, Issue 1, 2005, pp. 1-21.