List of prepositions in Modern Greek

Which words belong to the prepositions of Modern Greek is controversial for several reasons. In general, as in German, indeclinable words or phrases are meant that govern a noun phrase and assign a case to it.

Difficulties in defining prepositions in Modern Greek

In the relevant literature there are lists with mostly 14 to 39, in individual cases with well over a hundred prepositions and prepositional expressions. These big differences result from various problems that cannot always be solved clearly from a scientific point of view:

Role of ancient Greek and high-level prepositions: Numerous originally ancient Greek prepositions are in use in today's Greek; some very often and also productively, others only rarely and almost exclusively in fixed phrases taken from high-level language . The question of whether the latter can also be classified as modern Greek prepositions (or as “prepositions in modern Greek”) is controversial.
Part of speech boundaries between prepositions and adverbs , conjunctions , particles : A word cannot always be clearly assigned to a part of speech, as many words in Modern Greek ( κατόπιν, πάνω, πριν, etc.) can be used both as prepositions and as adverbs (conjunction, particle). Traditionally, these words are usually not referred to as prepositions in modern Greek grammars, but this contradicts their clearly prepositional use.
Simple and compound prepositions: Not only the words traditionally classified as prepositions, but also word sequences made up of two or more individual components have prepositional properties and usage (see below). It is controversial whether and, if so, which such word sequences can be classified as full-fledged prepositions.

The prepositions of Modern Greek in the presentation of scientific literature

Minimal lists

The shortest lists include about 14 prepositions, namely from the ancient Greek inherited αντί, από, κατά, μετά, μέχρι, παρά, προς, ως (έως) χωρίς as well as the more recent, popular formations για, δίχως, ίσαμε, με, σε . In addition to these 14, some ancient Greek prepositions are usually listed that are no longer productive, but only occur in fixed phrases, such as ανά, άνευ, διά, εκ / εξ, εν, επί, περί, προ, συν, υπέρ, υπό . However, this is problematic for several reasons: On the one hand, some ancient Greek prepositions such as περί, επί, υπέρ, υπό are used productively in an upscale modern Greek language style, but also occasionally in the spoken contemporary language; on the other hand, prepositions like εν actually only occur in certain fixed phrases and raise the question of the extent to which it is justified and useful to speak of “modern Greek prepositions”.
Lists like these mostly have a canonical understanding of the part of speech “preposition” in Greek and consider this a closed class.

Extended preposition lists

Longer lists take into account a number of additional words in addition to the above:

Words that were representatives of other parts of speech in ancient Greek or Katharevousa , but are now used as (denominal) prepositions and are identical to these in their properties: μέσω and λόγω, for example, are historically and morphologically dative forms of the nouns το μέσον and ο λόγος ; in their current form they are indeclinable and can never stand alone, they always need a genitive complement. In this respect, they do not differ from the classical prepositions and can therefore also be regarded as prepositions. Although they come from the high-level language, they are now fully integrated into modern Greek and are also used in the spoken language. Former adjectives ( ενώπιον ) or prepositional phrases ( εξαιτίας ), which today can be described as independent prepositions, are also included here.
Words that can be used both as an adverb and as a preposition. These include γύρω, δίπλα, κοντά, μαζί, μακριά, μέσα, μπροστά, πάνω, πίσω, πλάι, εντός, κατόπιν, μεταξύ, ερήμην, δυνάμει, εκτός, ανατολικά, βόρεια, δυτικά, νότια, αριστερά, δεξιά and others.
Words that were traditionally classified mostly as adverbs and / or not considered at all in modern Greek grammars because of their rarity or learning, but occur in prepositional function: εκατέρωθεν, εκείθεν, έναντι, εντεύθεν, μακράν, πέραν, πέριξ, πλησίον u. a.

Compound prepositions

Another extensive group of phrases that Greek linguistics sometimes consider equal prepositions are compound or complex prepositions. Since in the development from Ancient Greek to Hellenistic Greek and Medieval Greek to Modern Greek, numerous prepositions have lost their original local meaning in favor of transferred meanings, and since the case opposition , i.e. the coexistence of several meaning-differentiating case reactions in a preposition, has been increasingly reduced , numerous possibilities of expressing elementary spatial relationships such as on, before, under were no longer available. To compensate for this deficiency, space adverbs were combined with the primary prepositions από and σε :
πάνω ( above, above ) + από ( from, out )> πάνω από ( above ).
It can be shown that most of these complex prepositions are no longer composed of two still independent components, but form a new, grammatical unit in which the preposition από / σε has lost its original meaning and is no longer semantically speaking from the preceding adverb separate is. However, this does not apply wherever a spatial adverb is placed next to a primary preposition: κάτω σε ( below in ), for example, does not count as a compound preposition, since here both components are still independent and only stand next to each other, but without forming a new unit. Other compound prepositions, the prepositional character of which is controversial in linguistics, are κατά μήκος, σύμφωνα με, κόντρα σε, εις βάρος, σε σύγκριση με, εν αναφορά προς and many others.

Categorization models

In the literature there are numerous different approaches to categorize the prepositions of Modern Greek. The following order models are among the most common:

Alphabetical
by syllable number (monosyllabic, two-syllable, three-syllable). The categorization according to the number of syllables is the oldest, as it was first used by the ancient Greek grammarian Dionysios Thrax , from whom the grammatical concept of the preposition comes.
originally ancient Greek versus purely modern Greek prepositions
productively used versus unproductive prepositions
after the case rection (prepositions with genitive, with dative, with accusative)
simple versus compound prepositions

The distinction between “real / real” and “fake / improper” prepositions, that is, those that can also function as verb prefixes and those for which this is not possible, is now obsolete and of purely historical interest.