# All languages: Position of adpositions



## shannenms

Most of the prepostions come before their object. That quite makes sense when we have in mind a structure for the rest of the sentence like subject/verb/object(SVO). But can the languages in which such a structure is alterable be expected to have more reverse structures, I mean to have preposition after the noun?
In ancient Greek, there are few cases where this happens: peri in Homeric verses is placed after its object, with a change in the accent. The same case is with eneka.

In this regard, Is it a psychological aspect of language or just an inclination of the speakers of that language?

Thanks in advance.


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## Athaulf

shannenms said:


> Most of the prepostions come before their object.



More precisely, they all do. That's what makes them *pre*positions, as opposed to postpositions or circumpositions.  



> That quite makes sense when we have in mind a structure for the rest of the sentence like subject/verb/object(SVO). But can the languages in which such a structure is alterable be expected to have more reverse structures, I mean to have preposition after the noun? In ancient Greek, there are few cases where this happens: peri in Homeric verses is placed after its object, with a change in the accent. The same case is with eneka.
> 
> In this regard, Is it a psychological aspect of language or just an inclination of the speakers of that language?


I know absolutely nothing about Homeric Greek, but I know that there are some theories about (supposed) linguistic universals that include some strong connections between whether a language is predominantly pre- or postpositional and a variety of other grammatical properties, including the word order. You might be interested in checking out this text, especially the numbers 2, 3, 9, 22, and 27, as well as the conclusions section. Note however that as a complete amateur in this area, I have no idea about how widespread or controversial these ideas are nowadays.


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## robbie_SWE

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't it the case in German?

I'm refering to verbs like *annehmen*, *aufmachen*, *zurückkehren* etc. They get separated (er nimmt _an_) and the prepostion is placed behind the object. 

 robbie


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## demalaga

The prepositions in nominal groups behave differently with prepositions modifyig the meaning of verbs.YOu should stydy them in different chapters.For example "do away with a law" meaning abolish a law.In this case prepositions are used after the verb and before the noun law, but are more strongly linked with the verb.But they are not postpositions technicaly.Also the prepositions included in German verbs in my view.


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## shannenms

robbie_SWE said:


> Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't it the case in German?
> 
> I'm refering to verbs like *annehmen*, *aufmachen*, *zurückkehren* etc. They get separated (er nimmt _an_) and the prepostion is placed behind the object.
> 
> robbie


 

Actually, I don't mean phrasal verbs.



Athaulf said:


> More precisely, they all do. That's what makes them *pre*positions, as opposed to postpositions or circumpositions.
> 
> I know absolutely nothing about Homeric Greek, but I know that there are some theories about (supposed) linguistic universals that include some strong connections between whether a language is predominantly pre- or postpositional and a variety of other grammatical properties, including the word order. You might be interested in checking out this text, especially the numbers 2, 3, 9, 22, and 27, as well as the conclusions section. Note however that as a complete amateur in this area, I have no idea about how widespread or controversial these ideas are nowadays.


 
Thanks for the link, that was great
I think this kind of naming is affected by this presumtion that all the prepositions come before the noun.


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## francois_auffret

Hello, 

In *Urdu*, *Hindi*, and all the Indian languages, prepositions always come after their 'object'.... Hence they are called *postposition.*


*Urdu:*

*Main us ke liye bohot kuchh kar rahâ hûn*
(I - him - for - a lot - am doing)
"_I am doing a lot for him_*"*

*Mere sâth chalo*
(Me- with- go)
_"Come/go with me"_

*Punjabi:*

*Rabb dilân vich rehndâ*
(God - hearts-inside-lives)
"_God lives inside the hearts_"

ETC, etc.... And as far as my humble knowledge is concerned there is not a single Indian language using prepositions. Only *postpositions* are used in the sub-continent, in Indo-Aryan, Dravidian or Munda languages...


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## Spectre scolaire

The link provided by _Athaulf_ is an interesting one. Appendix I: Basic Data on the 30-Language Sample shows an important limitation to the subject of this thread: Quite a number of languages do not possess either pre- or post-positions - Finnish, Japanese, Turkish, etc. – and, according to _francois_auffret_, languages of India are consistently “postpositional”. 

To the extent that we know the history of a language during a longer span of time, some languages appear to have changed radically during its history with regard to prepositions.

Hence, in a diachronic perspective, Greek has “lost” most of its prepositional inventory. Whereas Classical Greek had more than 20 of such _words indicating spatial relations_, Modern Greek has only got 4 basic prepositions left + some few used in special constructions. The question related to why such a _hecatomb_ has taken place is an interesting one, but would be off-topic here.

As _Athaulf_ has already pointed out, the question of this thread is not a very good one.  Perceived as it was by _robbie_SWE_ – actually in a wrong way, but definitely of great interest! – the issue would be a bit broader than just reflected in the answer given by _francois_auffret_ which in turn is highly pertinent but not asked for initially... The German type of verbs like *aufmachen* is further called “phrasal verbs” by _shannenms_, a terminology which is not really appropriate – except for English.

This thread desperately needs some precision. 
 ​


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## palomnik

To simplify Greenberg, Subject-Verb-Object (SVO) languages tend to have prepositions, and they also tend to have modifiers follow the item they modify.  This includes most of the Indo-European languages spoken in Europe, although in English modifiers precede the item they modify.  Chinese also tends to be a SVO language, although you can get up a good argument that it is not in this framework at all, but instead a "topic/comment language" - stuff for another thread, I dare say.

SOV languages, on the other hand, tend to have postpositions (like Japanese and the modern Indian languages) and modifiers usually precede the item they modify.  

VSO languages like Irish and Classical Arabic have prepositions and modifiers usually follow the item they modify.


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## shannenms

Spectre scolaire said:


> This thread desperately needs some precision.
> 
> ​


 
Could you tell what precision it needs?
Maybe, I have missed something to add.



palomnik said:


> VSO languages like Irish and Classical Arabic have prepositions and modifiers usually follow the item they modify.


 
If I have understood you well, you mean that in Classical  Arabic preposition comes after the word; Can you tell me some, especially from Holy Quran.

Thanks.


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## Flaminius

> Could you tell what precision it needs?


It'd help me understand you a lot with some clarification on whether this thread is about quaintness of prepositions in languages such as Homeric Greek and German or it is about the typology of adpositions (prepositions, postpositions and circumpositions [thank you for the new word, *Athaulf*]) à la Josef Greenberg.


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## demalaga

I agree that Arabic prepositions are used before the noun, not after it.For example bi, min, li, ilaa, and so on.But traditional Arabic grammar does not talk about prepositions, but rather about "particles" and some of them go after the noun at least in some cases, example Kull.But the adjectives in Arabic are  used allways after the noun.
In Romance languages I think there are no postpositions at all, only prepositions, correct me please if I am wrong, but other determiners can go after the noun and also adjectives.In the ancient language adjectives were used a lot before the noun but in modern language they are used preferably after it, but still you can use them before wich sounds a little archaic or poetic way of speaking.Some adjectives have two forms, one after and other before,You can use both.Examples in Spanish "Un gran árbol" "un árbol grande" in French "un bel arbre" "un arbre beau".Other determiners "para un su gato" ancient form.In modern language we say "para un gato suyo"But still you can choose "mi gato" or "el gato mío".


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## shannenms

Flaminius said:


> It'd help me understand you a lot with some clarification on whether this thread is about quaintness of prepositions in languages such as Homeric Greek and German or it is about the typology of adpositions (prepositions, postpositions and circumpositions [thank you for the new word, *Athaulf*]) à la Josef Greenberg.


 

This thread is about the typology of adposition, as you stated above. Homeric Greek is just an examlpe.


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## palomnik

shannenms said:


> If I have understood you well, you mean that in Classical Arabic preposition comes after the word; Can you tell me some, especially from Holy Quran.
> 
> Thanks.


 
I opened up my copy of the Quran, and the first example I came across was in Surah 26 الشعراء Ayat 201:

لَا يُؤْمِنُونَ بِهِ حَتَّى يَرَوُا الْعَذَابَ الْأَلِيمَ

Also, Surah 16 النحل Ayat 67:

وَمِن ثَمَرَاتِ النَّخِيلِ وَالأَعْنَابِ تَتَّخِذُونَ مِنْهُ سَكَرًا وَرِزْقًا حَسَنًا إِنَّ فِي ذَلِكَ لآيَةً لِّقَوْمٍ يَعْقِلُونَ​


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## demalaga

My knowledge of Arabic is not enough to understand the text included in post number 13 by palomnik,without using the dictionary,  but I identify two prepositions that intend to be an example of prepositions placed after the noun.I don't think this examples go against the rule that Arabic propositions nallways precede the noun. IN this case they are followed by a pronoun representing the noun that has been mentioned beforehand. bihi in compound of bi (proposition) en hi (propoun 3 person singular)Minhu, is the same with the preposition min.


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## Hulalessar

Spectre scolaire said:


> This thread desperately needs some precision.




Etymologically "preposition" comes from Latin "praepositio" = "a putting before". In Latin it was the word selected to name words which always come before the word they govern. However, the essential meaning of "preposition" is "a word used to relate a noun to other parts of the sentence" and not "a word that comes before another word." Since the word describes a function there was really no need to introduce the word "postposition" to name words that have the function of prepositions but happen to come after the word they govern; it was just felt necessary because "preposition" contains the element "pre-" -  a case of allowing etymology to override semantics. Contrast the case of "adjective" where we do not have separate generic words to descibe adjectives that come before and after the words they qualify.

So, whilst linguists may prefer to use the word "postposition" I do not think we can condemn a non-linguist who talks about prepositions coming after nouns since he is simply thinking about function.

Of course in English we have the oddity that prepositions can come at the end of a sentence: _He is the sort of man you can have a nice talk with. _Would any linguist decline to call "with" in this instance a preposition because it does not come before anything? It is surely only the fact that "preposition" contains the element "pre-" that led to the "rule" that English sentences should not end in a preposition - a severe case of etymologitis.


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## palomnik

demalaga said:


> My knowledge of Arabic is not enough to understand the text included in post number 13 by palomnik,without using the dictionary, but I identify two prepositions that intend to be an example of prepositions placed after the noun.I don't think this examples go against the rule that Arabic propositions nallways precede the noun. IN this case they are followed by a pronoun representing the noun that has been mentioned beforehand. bihi in compound of bi (proposition) en hi (propoun 3 person singular)Minhu, is the same with the preposition min.


 

My bad. I was thinking about modifiers, not prepositions, and the items I underlined were nouns with modifiers. Yes, of course, prepositions come before nouns in Arabic. To use the same examples:

لَا يُؤْمِنُونَ بِهِ حَتَّى يَرَوُا الْعَذَابَ الْأَلِيمَ
وَمِن ثَمَرَاتِ النَّخِيلِ وَالأَعْنَابِ تَتَّخِذُونَ مِنْهُ سَكَرًا وَرِزْقًا حَسَنًا إِنَّ فِي ذَلِكَ لآيَةً لِّقَوْمٍ يَعْقِلُونَ

Shannems, I had meant to say "Classical Arabic has prepositions (as opposed to postpositions), and modifiers come after the word they modify."


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## shannenms

palomnik said:


> My bad. I was thinking about modifiers, not prepositions, and the items I underlined were nouns with modifiers. Yes, of course, prepositions come before nouns in Arabic. To use the same examples:
> 
> لَا يُؤْمِنُونَ بِهِ حَتَّى يَرَوُا الْعَذَابَ الْأَلِيمَ
> وَمِن ثَمَرَاتِ النَّخِيلِ وَالأَعْنَابِ تَتَّخِذُونَ مِنْهُ سَكَرًا وَرِزْقًا حَسَنًا إِنَّ فِي ذَلِكَ لآيَةً لِّقَوْمٍ يَعْقِلُونَ
> 
> Shannems, I had meant to say "Classical Arabic has prepositions (as opposed to postpositions), and modifiers come after the word they modify."


 
Now I can understand what you mean. Those verses from Holy Quran completely make sense to me. Maybe I should restrict this thread to only Indo-european languages unless there are found some examples of the semetic languages in which preposition is serving as a postposition.


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## palomnik

shannenms said:


> Now I can understand what you mean. Those verses from Holy Quran completely make sense to me. Maybe I should restrict this thread to only Indo-european languages unless there are found some examples of the semetic languages in which preposition is serving as a postposition.


 
Shannems, on a hunch I pulled out a book on Amharic that I have.  I can't speak any Amharic, outside of saying "hello", but I saw to my surprise that while Amharic has a couple of prepositions that appear before words, most Amharic prepositions consist of two parts, one part before the noun and a second part after - e.g., mengedu = "chair", be mengeddu lay = "on the chair," ke mengedu betach = "under the chair."  As Amharic is a Semitic language I found that to be interesting.


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## shannenms

palomnik said:


> Shannems, on a hunch I pulled out a book on Amharic that I have. I can't speak any Amharic, outside of saying "hello", but I saw to my surprise that while Amharic has a couple of prepositions that appear before words, most Amharic prepositions consist of two parts, one part before the noun and a second part after - e.g., mengedu = "chair", be mengeddu lay = "on the chair," ke mengedu betach = "under the chair." As Amharic is a Semitic language I found that to be interesting.


 
That's vey interesting, because the same case happens in Middle Persian, Pahlavi. I think this kind of use of preposition is only peculiar and unique to Persian. It corroborates my idea that many of the grammatical features of Pahlavi is taken from Semetic languages unless Amharic is a new language becuase it is the first time I see it.


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## Aydintashar

Spectre scolaire said:


> The link provided by _Athaulf_ is an interesting one. Appendix I: Basic Data on the 30-Language Sample shows an important limitation to the subject of this thread: Quite a number of languages do not possess either pre- or post-positions - Finnish, Japanese, Turkish, etc. – and, according to _francois_auffret_, languages of India are consistently “postpositional”.
> 
> To the extent that we know the history of a language during a longer span of time, some languages appear to have changed radically during its history with regard to prepositions.
> 
> Hence, in a diachronic perspective, Greek has “lost” most of its prepositional inventory. Whereas Classical Greek had more than 20 of such _words indicating spatial relations_, Modern Greek has only got 4 basic prepositions left + some few used in special constructions. The question related to why such a _hecatomb_ has taken place is an interesting one, but would be off-topic here.
> 
> As _Athaulf_ has already pointed out, the question of this thread is not a very good one.  Perceived as it was by _robbie_SWE_ – actually in a wrong way, but definitely of great interest! – the issue would be a bit broader than just reflected in the answer given by _francois_auffret_ which in turn is highly pertinent but not asked for initially... The German type of verbs like *aufmachen* is further called “phrasal verbs” by _shannenms_, a terminology which is not really appropriate – except for English.
> 
> This thread desperately needs some precision.
> 
> ​


 
I cannot agree with this. Turkish is definitely a post-positional language. Apart from post-positions, the function is also partially fulfilled by the agglutinative particles (suffixes).


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## Forero

Are "around" and "over" postpositions in "A pint's a pound, the world around" and "Colombia is known the world over for its coffee"?  What of the ends of "therein", "herewith", etc.?


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## darnil

demalaga said:


> In Romance languages I think there are no postpositions at all, only prepositions, correct me please if I am wrong


 You're not wrong, in my opinion, but I remember a discussion in class about _río arriba / calle _abajo, ('down the river', literally 'river down' and 'up the street', lit. 'street up') etc. It was proposed as a kind of postpositions, but there were other options.


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## javier8907

I'm afraid it's "río abajo" and "calle arriba"

What one could argue is whether "down" and "up" are here prepositions or adverbs.

In Basque adpossitions are expressed only by suffixes: "aita*rena*" (dad's), "mahaia*ren gainean*" (on the table, lit. "on top of the table", as "gaina" means "top"), Madril*era* (to Madrid)...


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## magnus

Norwegian has mostly prepositions. The only exceptions I can think of are the postposition ("dette til tross" - "in spite of this") and the circumposition ("fra nå av" - "from now on").


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## Sepia

robbie_SWE said:


> Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't it the case in German?
> 
> I'm refering to verbs like *annehmen*, *aufmachen*, *zurückkehren* etc. They get separated (er nimmt _an_) and the prepostion is placed behind the object.
> 
> robbie


 

At first glance one might think you were right about this, but you are not. At least not quite.

True is that in these cases where such verbs are split there is a preposition behind an object. This, however, is the direct or indirect object of the verb, and not part of the prepositional link.


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## ciao amore

*Turkish is an agglunative language, so, there are lots of postpositions ( logical for me than the prepositions in other languages. ) used after the noun. i.e;*

*-bu soru üzerine. = about this question.*

*As in this example, even if it's inversed; it's logical but sounds too odd.*


*- üzerine bu soru = about this question.*

*And this is just for the prepositions used as a noun.*


*But we can never inverse as follows;*


*- okula = to school*

*Here -a  means '' to ''. That's the point.*


*a-okul.*


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