Adposition


In grammar, an adposition is an element that combines syntactically with a phrase and indicates how that phrase should be interpreted in the surrounding context. "Adposition" is a general term that includes the more specific labels preposition, postposition, and circumposition, which indicate the position of the adposition with respect to its complement phrase. In linguistics, all of these are considered to be members of the syntactic category "P". Adpositional phrases (or "PPs", consisting of an adpositional head and its complement phrase) are used for a wide range of syntactic and semantic functions, most commonly modification and complementation. The following examples illustrate some uses of English prepositions:

Definition

Adpositions form a heterogeneous class, with fuzzy boundaries that tend to overlap with other categories (like verbs, nouns, and adjectives). It is thus impossible to provide an absolute definition that picks out all and only the adpositions in every language. The following properties are, however, characteristic of the most frequently used, "core" members of most adpositional systems:

Classification

Adpositions can be organized into subclasses according to various criteria. These can be based on directly observable properties (such as the adposition's form or its position in the sentence) or on less visible properties (such as the adposition's meaning or function in the context at hand).

Simple vs complex

Simple adpositions consist of a single word, while complex adpositions consist of a group of words that act as one unit. Some examples of complex prepositions in English are:

The boundary between complex adpositions and free combinations of words is also a fuzzy one. For English, this involves structures of the form "preposition + (article) + noun + preposition". The following characteristics are good indications that a given combination is "frozen" enough to be considered a complex preposition in English:

Classification by position

The surface position of an adposition with respect to its complement allows us to define the following subclasses:

It is usually straightforward to say whether an adposition precedes or follows its complement, but in some cases, the complement may not appear in its "normal" position. For example, in preposition stranding constructions, the complement appears somewhere to the left of the preposition:

Some adpositions can in fact appear on either side of their complement; these might be called ambipositions (Libert 2006):

Another logical possibility is for the adposition to appear on both sides of its complement:

Melis (2003) proposes the descriptive term interposition for adpositions in the structures such as the following:

Classification by complement

Although noun phrases are the most typical complements, adpositions can in fact combine with a variety of syntactic categories, much like verbs.

Also like verbs, adpositions can appear without a complement; see Adverbs below.

Some adpositions could be described as combining with two complements:

Semantic classification

Adpositions can be used to express a wide range of semantic relations between their complement and the rest of the context. The following list is not an exhaustive classification:

In some contexts, adpositions appear in contexts where their semantic contribution is minimal, perhaps altogether absent. Such adpositions are sometimes referred to as functional or case-marking adpositions, and they are lexically selected by another element in the construction, or fixed by the construction as a whole.

Subclasses of spatial adpositions

Spatial adpositions can be divided into two main classes, namely directional and static ones. A directional adposition usually involves motion along a path over time, but can also denote a non-temporal path. Examples of directional adpositions include to, from, towards, into, along and through.

Static adpositions can be further subdivided into projective and non-projective ones. A non-projective static adposition is one whose meaning can be determined by inspecting the meaning of its complement and the meaning of the preposition itself. A projective static adposition requires, in addition, a perspective or point of view. If I say that Bob is behind the rock you need to know where I am in order to know on which side of the rock Bob is supposed to be. If I say that your pen is to the left of my book you also need to know what my point of view is. No such point of view is required in the interpretation of sentences like your pen is on the desk. Projective static prepositions can sometimes take the complement itself as "point of view," if this provides us with certain information. For example, a house normally has a front and a back, so a sentence like the following is actually ambiguous between two readings: one has it that Bob is at the back of the house; the other has it that Bob is on the other side of the house, with respect to the speaker's point of view.

Classification by grammatical function

Particular uses of adpositions can be classified according to the function of the adpositional phrase in the sentence.

Adpositional languages typically single out a particular adposition for the following special functions:

Overlaps with other categories

Adverbs

We observe many similarities in form between adpositions and adverbs. Some adverbs are transparently derived from the fusion of a preposition and its complement, and some prepositions have adverb-like uses with no complement:

Phrasal verbs in English are composed of a verb and a "particle" that also looks like an intransitive preposition. The same can be said for the separable verb prefixes found in Dutch (and German).

Conjunctions

The set of adpositions overlaps with the set of subordinating conjunctions:

Coverbs

In some languages, the role of adpositions is served by coverbs, words that are lexically verbs, but are generally used to convey the meaning of adpositions.

For instance, whether prepositions exist in Chinese is sometimes considered an open question. Coverbs are often referred to as prepositions because they appear before the noun phrase they modify. However, unlike prepositions, coverbs can sometimes stand alone as main verbs. For instance, in Standard Mandarin, dào can be used in a prepositional or a verb sense:

Case affixes

From a functional point of view, adpositions and morphological case markings are strikingly similar. An adpositional phrase in one language often corresponds directly to a case-marked noun phrase in another language. For example, the agentive noun phrase in the passive construction in English is introduced by the preposition by, while in Russian it is marked by the instrumental case. Sometimes this can be observed within a single language. For example, in certain uses the genitive case in German is interchangeable with a von prepositional phrase.

Despite this functional similarity, adpositions and case markings are distinct grammatical categories:

Still, it can be difficult to draw a clear boundary between case markings and adpositions. For example, the post-nominal elements in Japanese and Korean are sometimes called case markings, sometimes postpositions (primarily a terminological issue).

Turkish and Finnish have both extensive case-marking and postpositions, and here there is evidence to help distinguish the two:

Word choice

In ambiguous cases, there is not always a clear rule which adposition is appropriate, and different languages and regional dialects may have different conventions. Learning the conventionally preferred word is a matter of exposure to examples. For example, most dialects of American English have "to wait in line", but some have "to wait on line".

References

See also

Citations