Prepositions and postpositions, together called adpositions (or broadly, in traditional grammar, simply prepositions),
are a
class of words used to express spatial or temporal relations (''in'', ''under'', ''towards'', ''before'') or mark various
semantic roles
In certain theories of linguistics, thematic relations, also known as semantic roles, are the various roles that a noun phrase may play with respect to the action or state described by a governing verb, commonly the sentence's main verb. For exam ...
(''of'', ''for'').
A preposition or postposition typically combines with a
noun phrase, this being called its
complement, or sometimes
object
Object may refer to:
General meanings
* Object (philosophy), a thing, being, or concept
** Object (abstract), an object which does not exist at any particular time or place
** Physical object, an identifiable collection of matter
* Goal, an ai ...
. A preposition comes before its complement; a postposition comes after its complement. English generally has prepositions rather than postpositions – words such as ''in'', ''under'' and ''of'' precede their objects, such as ''in England'', ''under the table'', ''of Jane'' – although there are a few exceptions including "ago" and "notwithstanding", as in "three days ago" and "financial limitations notwithstanding". Some languages that use a different word order have postpositions instead, or have both types. The
phrase formed by a preposition or postposition together with its complement is called a
prepositional phrase (or postpositional phrase, adpositional phrase, etc.) – such phrases usually play an
adverbial role in a sentence.
A less common type of adposition is the circumposition, which consists of two parts that appear on each side of the complement. Other terms sometimes used for particular types of adposition include ''ambiposition'', ''inposition'' and ''interposition''. Some linguists use the word ''preposition'' in place of ''adposition'' regardless of the applicable word order.
[An example is Huddleston & Pullum (2002) ("''CGEL''"), whose choice of terms is discussed on p. 602.]
Terminology
The word ''preposition'' comes from la, prae- prefix (pre- prefix) ("before") and la, 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,
Hindi,
Urdu,
Turkish
Turkish may refer to:
*a Turkic language spoken by the Turks
* of or about Turkey
** Turkish language
*** Turkish alphabet
** Turkish people, a Turkic ethnic group and nation
*** Turkish citizen, a citizen of Turkey
*** Turkish communities and mi ...
,
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
article
Article often refers to:
* Article (grammar), a grammatical element used to indicate definiteness or indefiniteness
* Article (publishing), a piece of nonfictional prose that is an independent part of a publication
Article may also refer to:
G ...
s,
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
An adpositional phrase, in linguistics, is a syntactic category that includes ''prepositional phrases'', ''postpositional phrases'', and ''circumpositional phrases''. Adpositional phrases contain an adposition (preposition, postposition, or circ ...
or prepositional phrase (PP) (or for specificity, a postpositional or circumpositional phrase).
An adposition establishes a
grammatical
In linguistics, grammaticality is determined by the conformity to language usage as derived by the grammar of a particular variety (linguistics), speech variety. The notion of grammaticality rose alongside the theory of generative grammar, the go ...
relationship that links its complement to another word or phrase in the context. It also generally establishes a
semantic
Semantics (from grc, σημαντικός ''sēmantikós'', "significant") is the study of reference, meaning, or truth. The term can be used to refer to subfields of several distinct disciplines, including philosophy, linguistics and comput ...
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
Adjunct may refer to:
* Adjunct (grammar), words used as modifiers
* Adjunct professor, a rank of university professor
* Adjuncts, sources of sugar used in brewing
* Adjunct therapy used to complement another main therapeutic agent, either to impr ...
to the same word.
* As an adjunct to a noun:
** the weather ''in
March''
** cheese ''from
France'' ''with
live bacteria''
* As a
predicative expression
A predicative expression (or just predicative) is part of a clause predicate, and is an expression that typically follows a copula (or linking verb), e.g. ''be'', ''seem'', ''appear'', or that appears as a second complement of a certain type of v ...
(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, below)
* As an adjunct to an adjective:
**
happy ''for them''
** sick ''until
recently''
In the last of these examples the complement has the form of an adverb, which has been
nominalised to serve as a noun phrase; see
Different forms of complement, below. Prepositional phrases themselves are sometimes nominalized:
* ''In
the cellar'' was chosen as the best place to store the wine.
An adposition may determine the
grammatical case of its complement. In English, the complements of prepositions take the
objective case where available (''from him'', not *''from he''). In
Koine Greek, for example, certain prepositions always take their objects in a certain case (e.g., ἐν always takes its object in the dative), while other prepositions may take their object in one of two or more cases, depending on the meaning of the preposition (e.g., διά takes its object in the genitive or in the accusative, depending on the meaning). Some languages have cases that are used exclusively after prepositions (
prepositional case), or special forms of
pronouns for use after prepositions (
prepositional pronoun
A prepositional pronoun is a special form of a personal pronoun that is used as the object of a preposition.
English does not have a distinct grammatical case that relates solely to prepositional pronouns. Certain genitive pronouns (e.g. a frien ...
).
The functions of adpositions overlap with those of case markings (for example, the meaning of the English preposition ''of'' is expressed in many languages by a
genitive case
In grammar, the genitive case (abbreviated ) is the grammatical case that marks a word, usually a noun, as modifying another word, also usually a noun—thus indicating an attributive relationship of one noun to the other noun. A genitive can al ...
ending), but adpositions are classed as
syntactic
In linguistics, syntax () is the study of how words and morphemes combine to form larger units such as phrases and sentences. Central concerns of syntax include word order, grammatical relations, hierarchical sentence structure (constituency), ...
elements, while case markings are
morphological.
Adpositions themselves are usually
non-inflecting ("invariant"): they do not have paradigms of form (such as tense, case, gender, etc.) the same way that verbs, adjectives, and nouns can. There are exceptions, though, such as prepositions that have fused with a pronominal object to form
inflected prepositions.
The following properties are characteristic of most adpositional systems:
* Adpositions are among the most frequently occurring words in languages that have them. For example, one frequency ranking for English word forms begins as follows (prepositions in bold):
::''the, of, and, to, a, in, that, it, is, was, I, for, on, you'', …
* The most common adpositions are single,
monomorphemic words. According to the ranking cited above, for example, the most common English prepositions are ''on'', ''in'', ''to'', ''by'', ''for'', ''with'', ''at'', ''of'', ''from'', ''as'', all of which are single-syllable words and cannot be broken down into smaller units of meaning.
* Adpositions form a
closed class of lexical items and cannot be productively derived from words of other categories.
Classification of prepositions
As noted above, adpositions are referred to by various terms, depending on their position relative to the complement.
While the term ''preposition'' is sometimes used to denote any adposition, in its stricter meaning it refers only to one which 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
German(s) may refer to:
* Germany (of or related to)
**Germania (historical use)
* Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language
** For citizens of Germany, see also German nationality law
**Ger ...
: ''mit einer Frau'' ("with a woman")
*
French
French (french: français(e), link=no) may refer to:
* Something of, from, or related to France
** French language, which originated in France, and its various dialects and accents
** French people, a nation and ethnic group identified with Franc ...
: ''sur la table'' ("on the table")
*
Polish
Polish may refer to:
* Anything from or related to Poland, a country in Europe
* Polish language
* Poles, people from Poland or of Polish descent
* Polish chicken
*Polish brothers (Mark Polish and Michael Polish, born 1970), American twin screenwr ...
: ''na stole'' ("on the table")
*
Russian: ''у меня'' ("in the possession of me"
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
Below may refer to:
*Earth
*Ground (disambiguation)
*Soil
*Floor
*Bottom (disambiguation)
Bottom may refer to:
Anatomy and sex
* Bottom (BDSM), the partner in a BDSM who takes the passive, receiving, or obedient role, to that of the top or ...
), 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
e", and the French ''Il fait trop froid, je ne suis pas habillée pour'' ("It's too cold, I'm not dressed for
he situation
He or HE may refer to:
Language
* He (pronoun), an English pronoun
* He (kana), the romanization of the Japanese kana へ
* He (letter), the fifth letter of many Semitic alphabets
* He (Cyrillic), a letter of the Cyrillic script called ''He'' in ...
")
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.
A ''postposition'' follows its complement to form a postpositional phrase. Examples include:
*
Latin: ''mecum'' ("with me", literally "me with")
*
Turkish
Turkish may refer to:
*a Turkic language spoken by the Turks
* of or about Turkey
** Turkish language
*** Turkish alphabet
** Turkish people, a Turkic ethnic group and nation
*** Turkish citizen, a citizen of Turkey
*** Turkish communities and mi ...
: ''benimle'' or ''benim ile'' ("with me", literally "my with")
*
Chinese
Chinese can refer to:
* Something related to China
* Chinese people, people of Chinese nationality, citizenship, and/or ethnicity
**''Zhonghua minzu'', the supra-ethnic concept of the Chinese nation
** List of ethnic groups in China, people of va ...
: 桌子上 ''zhuōzi shàng'' (lit. "table on"); this is a nominal form which usually requires an additional preposition to form an adverbial phrase (see
Chinese locative phrases)
*English: ''ten kilometers away'', ''ten months ago'' (both could be considered adverbs)
Some adpositions can appear either before or after their complement:
* English: ''the evidence notwithstanding'' OR ''notwithstanding the evidence''
* German: ''meiner Meinung nach'' OR ''nach meiner Meinung'' ("in my opinion")
* German: ''die Straße entlang'' OR ''entlang der Straße'' ("along the road"; here a different
case
Case or CASE may refer to:
Containers
* Case (goods), a package of related merchandise
* Cartridge case or casing, a firearm cartridge component
* Bookcase, a piece of furniture used to store books
* Briefcase or attaché case, a narrow box to c ...
is used when ''entlang'' precedes the noun)
An adposition like the above, which can be either a preposition or a postposition, can be called an ambiposition. However, ''ambiposition'' may also be used to refer to a circumposition (see below), or to a word that appears to function as a preposition and postposition simultaneously, as in the
Vedic Sanskrit construction (noun-1) ''ā'' (noun-2), meaning "from (noun-1) to (noun-2)".
Whether a language has primarily prepositions or postpositions is seen as an aspect of its
typological
Typology is the study of types or the systematic classification of the types of something according to their common characteristics. Typology is the act of finding, counting and classification facts with the help of eyes, other senses and logic. Ty ...
classification, and tends to correlate with other properties related to
head directionality
In linguistics, head directionality is a proposed parameter that classifies languages according to whether they are head-initial (the head of a phrase precedes its complements) or head-final (the head follows its complements). The head is the ...
. Since an adposition is regarded as the
head
A head is the part of an organism which usually includes the ears, brain, forehead, cheeks, chin, eyes, nose, and mouth, each of which aid in various sensory functions such as sight, hearing, smell, and taste. Some very simple animals may ...
of its phrase, prepositional phrases are head-initial (or right-
branching), while postpositional phrases are head-final (or left-branching). There is a tendency for languages that feature postpositions also to have other head-final features, such as
verbs that follow their objects; and for languages that feature prepositions to have other head-initial features, such as
verbs that precede their objects. This is only a tendency, however; an example of a language that behaves differently is
Latin, which employs mostly prepositions, even though it typically places verbs after their objects.
A ''circumposition'' consists of two or more parts, positioned on both sides of the complement. Circumpositions are very common in
Pashto and
Kurdish. The following are examples from
Northern Kurdish (Kurmanji):
* ''bi ... re'' ("with")
* ''di ... de'' ("in", for things, not places)
* ''di ... re'' ("via, through")
* ''ji ... re'' ("for")
* ''ji ... ve'' ("since")
Various constructions in other languages might also be analyzed as circumpositional, for example:
* English: ''from now on''
*
Dutch: ''naar het einde toe'' ("towards the end", lit. "to the end to")
*
Chinese
Chinese can refer to:
* Something related to China
* Chinese people, people of Chinese nationality, citizenship, and/or ethnicity
**''Zhonghua minzu'', the supra-ethnic concept of the Chinese nation
** List of ethnic groups in China, people of va ...
: 从冰箱里 ''cóng bīngxiāng lǐ'' ("from the inside of the refrigerator", lit. "from refrigerator inside")
*
French
French (french: français(e), link=no) may refer to:
* Something of, from, or related to France
** French language, which originated in France, and its various dialects and accents
** French people, a nation and ethnic group identified with Franc ...
: ''à un détail près'' ("except for one detail", lit. "at one detail near")
*
Swedish
Swedish or ' may refer to:
Anything from or related to Sweden, a country in Northern Europe. Or, specifically:
* Swedish language, a North Germanic language spoken primarily in Sweden and Finland
** Swedish alphabet, the official alphabet used by ...
: ''för tre timmar sedan'' ("three hours ago", lit. "for three hours since")
*
German
German(s) may refer to:
* Germany (of or related to)
**Germania (historical use)
* Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language
** For citizens of Germany, see also German nationality law
**Ger ...
: ''aus dem Zimmer heraus'' ("out from the room", lit. "from the room out")
*
Tigrinya: ''ካብ ሕጂ ንደሓር ("from now on", lit. "from now to later")
Most such phrases, however, can be analyzed as having a different hierarchical structure (such as a prepositional phrase modifying a following adverb). The Chinese example could be analyzed as a prepositional phrase headed by ''cóng'' ("from"), taking the
locative noun phrase ''bīngxīang lǐ'' ("refrigerator inside") as its complement.
An inposition is a rare type of adposition that appears between parts of a complex complement. For example, in the native Californian
Timbisha language
Timbisha (''Tümpisa'') or Panamint (also called Koso) is the language of the Native American people who have inhabited the region in and around Death Valley, California, and the southern Owens Valley since late prehistoric times. There are a fe ...
, the phrase "from a mean cold" can be translated using the word order "cold from mean"—the inposition follows the noun but precedes any following
modifiers that form part of the same
noun phrase. The Latin word ''cum'' is also commonly used as an inposition, as in the phrase ''
summa cum laude
Latin honors are a system of Latin phrases used in some colleges and universities to indicate the level of distinction with which an academic degree has been earned. The system is primarily used in the United States. It is also used in some Sou ...
'', meaning "with highest praise", lit. "highest with praise".
The term interposition has been used for adpositions in structures such as ''word for word'', French ''coup sur coup'' ("one after another, repeatedly"), and Russian друг с другом ("one with the other"). This is not a case of an adposition appearing inside its complement, as the two nouns do not form a single phrase (there is no phrase *''word word'', for example); such uses have more of a
coordinating character.
Stranding
Preposition stranding is a
syntactic
In linguistics, syntax () is the study of how words and morphemes combine to form larger units such as phrases and sentences. Central concerns of syntax include word order, grammatical relations, hierarchical sentence structure (constituency), ...
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
An interrogative word or question word is a function word used to ask a question, such as ''what, which'', ''when'', ''where'', ''who, whom, whose'', ''why'', ''whether'' and ''how''. They are sometimes called wh-words, because in English most o ...
. 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
Swedish or ' may refer to:
Anything from or related to Sweden, a country in Northern Europe. Or, specifically:
* Swedish language, a North Germanic language spoken primarily in Sweden and Finland
** Swedish alphabet, the official alphabet used by ...
. Its existence in
German
German(s) may refer to:
* Germany (of or related to)
**Germania (historical use)
* Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language
** For citizens of Germany, see also German nationality law
**Ger ...
is debated. Preposition stranding is also found in some
Niger–Congo languages
Niger–Congo is a hypothetical language family spoken over the majority of sub-Saharan Africa. It unites the Mande languages, the Atlantic-Congo languages (which share a characteristic noun class system), and possibly several smaller groups of ...
such as Vata and Gbadi, and in some North American varieties of
French
French (french: français(e), link=no) may refer to:
* Something of, from, or related to France
** French language, which originated in France, and its various dialects and accents
** French people, a nation and ethnic group identified with Franc ...
.
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
kespeare; 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 course of time."