adposition

English

Etymology

From ad- +‎ position, from Latin adpositio, from adpositum, past participle of adponere, an alternative form of apponere (“to put near”).

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ˈæd.pəˌzɪ.ʃən/

Noun

adposition (plural adpositions)

1. (grammar) An element that combines syntactically with a phrase and indicates how that phrase should be interpreted in the surrounding context; a preposition or postposition.
   • 2003, Mark C. Baker, Lexical Categories: Verbs, Nouns and Adjectives, Cambridge University Press, page 303:

     Throughout this book, I have assumed that adpositions (prepositions and postpositions) are not lexical categories, but rather functional categories. […] While this view of adpositions is far from unprecedented, it runs contrary to the more standard generative treatment, championed by Jackendoff (1977: 31-33), in which adpositions constitute a fourth lexical category, filling out the logical space of possibilities defined by the two binary-valued features $+\!/\!\!-\!\!{\mathsf {N}}$ and $+\!/\!\!-\!\!{\mathsf {V}}$.

   • 2008, Amani Bohoussou, Stavros Skopeteas, Grammaticalization of spatial adpositions in Nànáfwê, Elisabeth Verhoeven, Stavros Skopeteas, Yong-Min Shin, Yoko Nishina, Johannes Helmbrecht (editors), Studies on Grammaticalization, Walter de Gruyter (Mouton), page 77,

     It is well known in West African linguistics that languages in this broad sense display adpositions that emerge out of these two sources, namely nouns and verbs.

   • 2010, Claude Hagège, Adpositions, Oxford University Press, page 332:

     By establishing adpositions as a constantly referred to but never really demonstrated language category, this book has provided a basis for the theory of the linguistic category. […] Adpositions could be considered a clear-cut category if one relied on syntax only, for one simple reason: the are specialized in function-marking.

Synonyms

• preposition (broad sense)

Hyponyms

• preposition (narrow sense)
• postposition
• circumposition

Derived terms

• adpositional
• adpositionhood

 

Translations

element combining with a phrase and indicating how to interpret the phrase in the context

• Armenian: կապ (hy) (kap)
• Chinese:

  Mandarin: 介詞／介词 (zh) (jiècí), 前置詞／前置词 (zh) (qiánzhìcí) (preposition), 後置詞／后置词 (zh) (hòuzhìcí) (postposition)

• Dutch: adpositie f
• Estonian: kaassõna
• Finnish: adpositio (fi), suhdesana (fi)
• French: adposition (fr) f
• Georgian: თანდებული (ka) (tandebuli)
• German: Adposition (de) f, Präposition (de) f (broad sense), Verhältniswort (de), Lagewort (de)
• Ingrian: apusana
• Japanese: 接置詞 (せっちし, setchishi)
• Polish: przyimek (pl) m
• Portuguese: adposição (pt) f
• Romanian: adpoziție f
• Russian: предло́г (ru) m (predlóg) (preposition), послело́г (ru) m (poslelóg) (postposition)
• Spanish: adposición (es) f

Further reading

• Preposition and postposition on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
• List of English prepositions on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
• Part of speech on Wikipedia.Wikipedia

Finnish

Noun

adposition

1. genitive singular of adpositio