adposition

Terminology

The word preposition comes from Latin: prae- prefix (pre- prefix) ("before") and Latin: ponere ("to put"). This refers to the situation in Latin and Greek (and in English), where such words are placed before their complement (except sometimes in Ancient Greek), and are hence "pre-positioned".

In some languages, including Sindhi, Hindustani, Turkish, Hungarian, Korean, and Japanese, the same kinds of words typically come after their complement. To indicate this, they are called postpositions (using the prefix post-, from Latin post 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 a circumposition (from Latin circum- prefix "around").

In some languages, for example Finnish, some adpositions can be used as both prepositions and postpositions.

Prepositions, postpositions and circumpositions are collectively known as adpositions (using the Latin prefix ad-, meaning "to"). However, some linguists prefer to use the well-known and longer-established term preposition in place of adposition, irrespective of position relative to the complement.

Grammatical properties

An adposition typically combines with exactly one complement, most often a noun phrase (or, in a different analysis, a determiner phrase). In English, this is generally a noun (or something functioning as a noun, e.g., a gerund), together with its specifier and modifiers such as articles, adjectives, etc. The complement is sometimes called the object of the adposition. The resulting phrase, formed by the adposition together with its complement, is called an adpositional phrase or prepositional phrase (PP) (or for specificity, a postpositional or circumpositional phrase).

An adposition establishes a grammatical relationship that links its complement to another word or phrase in the context. It also generally establishes a semantic relationship, which may be spatial (in, on, under, ...), temporal (after, during, ...), or of some other type (of, for, via, ...). The World 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.

Some examples of the use of English prepositions are given below. In each case, the prepositional phrase appears in italics, the preposition within it appears in bold, and the preposition's complement is underlined. As demonstrated in some of the examples, more than one prepositional phrase may act as an adjunct to the same word.

As an adjunct to a noun:

the weather in March

cheese from France with live bacteria

As a predicative expression (complement of a copula)

The key is under the stone.

As an adjunct to a verb:

sleep throughout the winter

danced atop the tables for hours

dispense with the formalities (see Semantic functions, above)

Classification of adpositions

As noted above, adpositions are referred to by various terms, depending on their position relative to the complement.

While the term preposition 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:

German: mit einer Frau ("with a woman")

French: sur la table ("on the table")

Welsh: ar y bwrdd ("on the table")

Polish: na stole ("on the table")

Russian: у меня ("in the possession of me" [I have])

Khmer: លើក្តារខៀន [ləː kdaːkʰiən] ("on (the) blackboard")

Tigrinya: አብ ልዕሊ ጣውላ [abː lɨʕli tʼawla] ("at/on top table"); አብ ትሕቲ ጣውላ [abː tɨħti tʼawla] ("at/on under table")

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 as preposition stranding (see also below), as in "Whom did you go with?" and "There's only one thing worse than being talked about." 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 come with [me]?", and the French Il fait trop froid, je ne suis pas habillée pour ("It's too cold, I'm not dressed for [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.

Stranding

Preposition stranding is a syntactic 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 preposition on has what as its complement, but what is moved to the start of the sentence, because it is an interrogative 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 in English, as well as North Germanic languages such as Swedish. Its existence in German is debated. Preposition stranding is also found in some Niger–Congo languages such as Vata and Gbadi, and in some North American varieties of French.

Some prescriptive English grammars teach that prepositions cannot end a sentence, although there is no rule prohibiting that use. 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 his Essentials 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 fools among (Sh[akespeare]); What are you laughing at?). 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."

Simple versus complex

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 include in spite of, with respect to, except for, by dint of, and next 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) through grammaticalisation. 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, current German 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").

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 as in front of, for the sake of. The following characteristics are good indications that a given combination is "frozen" enough to be considered a complex preposition in English:

It contains a word that cannot be used in any other context: by dint of, in lieu of.

The first preposition cannot be replaced: with a view to but not *for/without a view to.

It is impossible to insert an article, or to use a different article: on account of but not *on an/the account of; for the sake of but not *for a sake of.

The range of possible adjectives is very limited: in great favor of, but not *in helpful favor of.

Marginal prepositions

Marginal prepositions are prepositions that have affinities with other word classes, most notably participles. Marginal prepositions behave like prepositions but derive from other parts of speech. Some marginal prepositions in English include barring, concerning, considering, excluding, failing, following, including, notwithstanding, regarding, and respecting.

Proper versus improper

In descriptions of some languages, prepositions are divided into proper (or essential) and improper (or accidental). 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 include prima di ("before") and davanti (a) ("in front of") in Italian, and ergo ("on account of") and causa ("for the sake of") in Latin. In reference to Ancient Greek, however, an improper preposition is one that cannot also serve as a prefix to a verb.

Different forms of complement

As noted above, adpositions typically have noun phrases as complements. This can include nominal clauses and certain types of non-finite verb phrase:

We can't agree on whether to have children or not (complement is a nominal clause)

Let's think about solving this problem (complement is a gerund phrase)

pour encourager les autres (French: "to encourage the others", complement is an infinitive phrase)

The word to when it precedes the infinitive in English is not a preposition, but rather is a grammatical particle outside of any main word class.

In other cases, the complement may have the form of an adjective or adjective phrase, or an adverbial. This may be regarded as a complement representing a different syntactic category, or simply as an atypical form of noun phrase (see nominalization).

The scene went from blindingly bright to pitch black (complements are adjective phrases)

I worked there until recently (complement is an adverb)

Come out from under the bed (complement is an adverbial)

In the last example, the complement of the preposition from is in fact another prepositional phrase. The resulting sequence of two prepositions (from under) may be regarded as a complex preposition; in some languages, such a sequence may be represented by a single word, as Russian из-под iz-pod ("from under").

Some adpositions appear to combine with two complements:

Semantic functions

Adpositions can be used to express a wide range of semantic 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 highly polysemous (they have various different meanings). In many cases, a primary, spatial meaning becomes extended to non-spatial uses by metaphorical 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 foreign language learning. Usage can also vary between dialects of the same language (for example, American English has on the weekend, whereas British English uses at the weekend).

In some contexts (as in the case of some phrasal 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:

English: dispense with, listen to, insist on, proud of, good at

Russian: otvechat' na vopros ("answer the question", literally "answer on the question"), obvinenie v obmane ("accusation of [literally: in] fraud")

Spanish: soñar con ganar el título ("dream about [lit. with] winning the title"), consistir en dos grupos ("consist of [lit. in] two groups")

Prepositions sometimes mark roles that may be considered largely grammatical:

possession (in a broad sense) – the pen of my aunt (sometimes marked by genitive or possessive forms)

Inflected adpositions

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 the Celtic languages like Welsh and Irish. Polish also allows some degree of combining prepositions with pronouns in the third person.

Celtic

The majority of Welsh prepositions can be inflected. This is achieved by having a preposition such as o ('of/from') + a linking element; in the case of o this is -hon- + the assimilated pronoun element, resulting in ohon- 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 always o and not the "stem", e.g. dw i'n dod o Gymru – 'I come from Wales', gormod o gwrw – 'too much (of) beer'.

The following table gives the inflected forms of the preposition o ('of/from'). The optional pronouns that follow the inflected forms are given in parentheses.

Cymerodd ef hi ohonof – 'he took it from me'.

Semitic

Inflected prepositions are found in Semitic languages, including Hebrew, Arabic, Assyrian Neo-Aramaic and Amharic.

For example, the Arabic preposition على (/ʕalaː) 'on' inflects as علَيَّ (/ʕalajːa/) 'on me', علَيْكَ (/ʕalajka/) 'on you (M.SG)', علَيْهِ (/ʕalajhi/) 'on him', etc.

Other languages

Some Iranic languages, including Persian, have developed inflected prepositions. For example, Persian az u 'from him/her' becomes azaš; bā šomā 'with you PL' becomes bāhātun.

In Iberian Romance languages such as Spanish and Portuguese, the preposition con or com 'with' has special forms incorporating certain pronouns (depending on the language). For example, in Spanish and Asturian conmigo means 'with me'. Historically, this developed from the Latin use of cum 'with' after a pronoun, as in mecum '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 (and therefore looks like a pronominal prefix, rather than a suffix as in the examples above: bagai 'for', i-wagai 'for me').

Overlaps with other categories

Adverbs and particles

There are often similarities in form between adpositions and adverbs. Some adverbs are derived from the fusion of a preposition and its complement (such as downstairs, from down (the) stairs, and underground, from under (the) ground). Some words can function both as adverbs and as prepositions, such as inside, 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 either transitively or intransitively, and the adverbial forms might therefore be analyzed as "intransitive prepositions". This analysis could also be extended to other adverbs, such as here (this place), there (that place), afterward, etc., even though these never take complements.

Many English phrasal verbs contain particles that are used adverbially, even though they mostly have the form of a preposition (such words may be called prepositional adverbs). Examples are on in carry on, get on, etc., and over in take over, fall over, and so on. The equivalents in Dutch and German are separable prefixes, which also often have the same form as prepositions: for example, Dutch aanbieden and German anbieten (both meaning "to offer") contain the separable prefix aan/an, which is also a preposition meaning "on" or "to".

Conjunctions

Some words can be used both as adpositions and as subordinating conjunctions:

(preposition) before/after/since the end of the summer

(conjunction) before/after/since the summer ended

(preposition) It looks like another rainy day

(conjunction) It looks like it's going to rain again today

It would be possible to analyze such conjunctions (or even other subordinating conjunctions) as prepositions that take an entire clause as a complement.

Verbs

In some languages, including a number of Chinese varieties, many of the words that serve as prepositions can also be used as verbs. For instance, in Standard Chinese, 到 dào can be used in either a prepositional or a verbal sense:

我到北京去 wǒ dào Běijīng qù ("I go to Beijing"; qù, meaning "to go", is the main verb, dào is prepositional meaning "to")

我到了 wǒ dào le ("I have arrived"; dào is the main verb, meaning "to arrive")

Because of this overlap, and the fact that a sequence of prepositional phrases and verb phrases often resembles a serial verb construction, Chinese prepositions (and those of other languages with similar grammatical structures) are often referred to as coverbs.

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 on Chinese grammar, particularly the sections on coverbs and locative phrases.

Case affixes

Some grammatical 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 a passive construction is marked by the preposition by, while in Russian it is marked by the use of the instrumental case. Sometimes such equivalences exist within a single language; for example, the genitive case in German is often interchangeable with a phrase using the preposition von (just as in English, the preposition of is often interchangeable with the possessive suffix 's).

Adpositions combine syntactically with their complement, whereas case markings combine with a noun morphologically. In some instances it may not be clear which applies; the following are some possible means of making such a distinction:

Two adpositions can usually be joined with a coordinating conjunction and share a single complement (of and for the people), whereas this is generally not possible with case affixes;

One adposition can usually combine with two coordinated complements (of the city and the world), whereas a case affix would need to be repeated with each noun (Latin urbis et orbis, not *urb- et orbis);

Case markings combine primarily with nouns, whereas adpositions can combine with (nominalized) phrases of different categories;

A case marking usually appears directly on the noun, but an adposition can be separated from the noun by other words;

Within the noun phrase, determiners and adjectives may agree with the noun in case (case spreading), but an adposition only appears once;

A language can have hundreds of adpositions (including complex adpositions), but no language has that many distinct morphological cases.

Even so, a clear distinction cannot always be made. For example, the post-nominal elements in Japanese and Korean 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.