zompist wrote: ↑Sun Sep 06, 2020 5:37 pmI know it's not quite the question asked, but
no adpositions is quite possible— pre-contact Quechua is an example. (I'd have to review sources to see if it's borrowed any from Spanish.)
Does it accomplish that using something other than its many cases? Looking at the example declension table on Wikipedia, I notice locations aren't listed (below X, close to X, next to X), nor time relations (since X, during X, in X [days, months]), nor "against X", nor "according to X". Out of curiosity, how are these handled, if you know?
2+3 Clusivity wrote: ↑Sun Sep 06, 2020 4:13 pmIn general, if a language has a lot of serial verb constructions and/or relational nouns, I could see getting away with a pretty slim adpositional inventory.
Richard W wrote: ↑Mon Sep 07, 2020 11:19 amIt may be a matter of hocus pocus versus God's truth, but Thai is alleged to have very few if any adpositions, and my claim for cases with surface manifestation (genitive and construct) is usually treated as a joke. The words which serve to translate adpositions are (also) verbs or nouns (like English 'top').
At the same time, it bothers me that people, at least in conlanging land, seem to insist on considering these things actual verbs or nouns rather than words that are in more than one word class, one of them being adpositions.
For example, Mandarin 向 xiàng 'towards; to face or turn [to a direction], to support sb' can't be modified by the aspect markers 了 -le (perfective), 過 -guo (experiential) or 在 zài (action continuative) when it means 'towards'. It can be by 著 -zhe (stative continuative), but then any verb can in the sense of 'while [doing the thing]'. The negators 不 bù and 沒 méi have to be placed before it, so that test doesn't work.
Why bother considering it a "verb" then, as opposed to a preposition? The only reason I can see why 向 xiàng and similar are called "coverbs" (note, not "verbs") in Mandarin grammar is because it's interesting they're homophonous with a verb. Under the same logic, we could refer to English prepositions "in" and "on" as "coadverbs" as they're the same as the stressed locational/directional (pseudo-)adverbs of phrasal verbs like "go in", "be in" ("The doctor is in"), and "put your shirt on", but that doesn't make the prepositional uses actual adverbs...
Mutatis mutandis for the likes of 上面 shàngmiàn 'on X; the top part (of a thing)'. Why bother considering that a locational
noun, as opposed to a "postposition", or a "locational" (if you insist)? It can't be modified with a determiner.
(I'd like to add Mandarin also has words that everyone agrees, or should agree, are genuine prepositions and postpositions, like the preposition 於 yú which doesn't have a verbal use anymore, or the postposition 上 shàng 'on X; to go upwards [to a place], to go [to an activity]; part one of two' which doesn't have a use as a noun meaning 'top' anymore unless you want to sound very abbreviated/archaizing.)
This is not to say that in languages other than Mandarin such an analysis doesn't make sense. But I suspect my concerns are likely repeatable in many other such East and Southeast Asian languages...