Zompist Bboard Again

The other day, I looked through a copy of Linguistics For Dummies figuring that it was a safe bet I could find what postpositions were, as they were part of a definition I had kindly been given a few days before that.

Except the book didn't have them, not in the index or the table of contents. {as the Pythons put it, "Sir Not Appearing In This Film"}

It had prepositions, and told about the two groups of them. 'They name locations (on, in, over, under, beside) or paths (to, from, through, around, up, down)'.....and that they could be transitive or intransitive.


...and when I got home, I checked Wiki, which said postpositions come after their word, which is why they are called postpositions, and that that that was the entirety of what they did and why they're called that. (also that prepositions are the same thing, only on the other side of the word, and thats the entirety of what they are and do)


So, are postpositions a real thing/concept, or is either the book or wiki right?

thank you.

keenir wrote: ↑Sat Jan 15, 2022 11:31 pm The other day, I looked through a copy of Linguistics For Dummies figuring that it was a safe bet I could find what postpositions were, as they were part of a definition I had kindly been given a few days before that.

Except the book didn't have them, not in the index or the table of contents. {as the Pythons put it, "Sir Not Appearing In This Film"}

It had prepositions, and told about the two groups of them. 'They name locations (on, in, over, under, beside) or paths (to, from, through, around, up, down)'.....and that they could be transitive or intransitive.


...and when I got home, I checked Wiki, which said postpositions come after their word, which is why they are called postpositions, and that that that was the entirety of what they did and why they're called that. (also that prepositions are the same thing, only on the other side of the word, and thats the entirety of what they are and do)


So, are postpositions a real thing/concept, or is either the book or wiki right?

thank you.

Postpositions and prepositions are both real things; they're collectively referred to as adpositions. The wiki is correct.

keenir wrote: ↑Sat Jan 15, 2022 11:31 pm The other day, I looked through a copy of Linguistics For Dummies figuring that it was a safe bet I could find what postpositions were, as they were part of a definition I had kindly been given a few days before that.

Except the book didn't have them, not in the index or the table of contents. {as the Pythons put it, "Sir Not Appearing In This Film"}

It had prepositions, and told about the two groups of them. 'They name locations (on, in, over, under, beside) or paths (to, from, through, around, up, down)'.....and that they could be transitive or intransitive.


...and when I got home, I checked Wiki, which said postpositions come after their word, which is why they are called postpositions, and that that that was the entirety of what they did and why they're called that. (also that prepositions are the same thing, only on the other side of the word, and thats the entirety of what they are and do)


So, are postpositions a real thing/concept, or is either the book or wiki right?

thank you.

With apologies to its authors, that book is absolute rubbish. To be fair, Wikipedia is rubbish too, but it sounds like that book somehow exceeds it. ‘Postposition’ is perhaps one of the single most common terms in linguistics, and any introductory text whatsoever should at least mention them. Furthermore, from your description, it seems to confuse prepositions with verbs. I’d throw the book away and find one which is actually correct.

You probably learned about prepositions studying English grammar: to the house, up the road, for a better world, without feathers, etc. They attach to noun phrases, which also includes pronouns (for her) and gerundives (after studying).

Well, postpositions are the same, except they come after their object. Japanese has lots of them-- e.g. Keiko no inu 'Keiko's dog', parallel to '(the) dog of Keiko'. English has one postposition as well, ago: four years ago.

And yeah, adpositions is a cover term for both.

bradrn wrote: ↑Sun Jan 16, 2022 12:12 amWith apologies to its authors, that book is absolute rubbish. To be fair, Wikipedia is rubbish too, but it sounds like that book somehow exceeds it. ‘Postposition’ is perhaps one of the single most common terms in linguistics, and any introductory text whatsoever should at least mention them. Furthermore, from your description, it seems to confuse prepositions with verbs. I’d throw the book away and find one which is actually correct.

The book's on the shelves at Barnes&Noble...I was looking through it to see if it would be a good buy for me and my dad. (clearly not)

zompist wrote: ↑Sun Jan 16, 2022 12:21 am You probably learned about prepositions studying English grammar: to the house, up the road, for a better world, without feathers, etc. They attach to noun phrases, which also includes pronouns (for her) and gerundives (after studying).

Well, postpositions are the same, except they come after their object. Japanese has lots of them-- e.g. Keiko no inu 'Keiko's dog', parallel to '(the) dog of Keiko'. English has one postposition as well, ago: four years ago.

thanks for clarifying that.


thank you, Zompist, Bradrn, and Darren.

zompist wrote: ↑English has one postposition as well, ago: four years ago.

You can easily argue that English has more than one. Words like to and for are so often used at the end of a sentence that we can hardly refer to them as prepositions anymore.

Jonlang wrote: ↑Sun Jan 16, 2022 4:03 am

zompist wrote: ↑English has one postposition as well, ago: four years ago.

You can easily argue that English has more than one. Words like to and for are so often used at the end of a sentence that we can hardly refer to them as prepositions anymore.

That's not what a postposition means, though, any more than a "preposition" means that something can be moved to the start of the sentence.

Various things are happening when a 'preposition' appears at the end of a sentence:
* it's been moved from a subclause ("You gave it to who" > "Who did you give it to?")
* it got deleted ("Did you get a car with sunroof?" "No, I got one without")
* it's not a preposition at all ("He looked up")

And more I'm not thinking of right now. But you can't just back any old preposition: "We're going to the circus" > *"We're going the circus to"

In English, as in other languages, the functional distinction between a preposition/postposition and other parts of speech can be fuzzy.

Sometimes you have formal similairities that are clearly not the same thing, as Zompist mentioned. "He moved on" doesn't really have a preposition in it, functionally speaking.

Sometimes you have formal distinctions that mask functional similarities. For example, participles like "including" can be hard to differentiate from prepositions in terms of syntax alone (although I'm sure it could be done if you really got into the weeds).

And then there is the whole question of how adpositions are distinct from adverbs. In some languages without really clear rules on what an adverb even is, this can be a surprisingly difficult question, since they both create non-core arguments within a clause. In Zompist's example "four years ago," I would argue that "ago" is an adverb, since it behaves the same way as "hence" or "today." But how would we even decide that? It's largely philosophical. If "ago" is indeed a unique postposition, we can't expect a whole series of words to test against it to see if it fits the category. It's a complex question.

zompist wrote: ↑Sun Jan 16, 2022 12:21 am English has one postposition as well, ago: four years ago.

Or two unless you exclude the possessive clitic.

keenir wrote: ↑Sat Jan 15, 2022 11:31 pm ...and when I got home, I checked Wiki, which said postpositions come after their word, which is why they are called postpositions, and that that that was the entirety of what they did and why they're called that.

bradrn wrote: ↑Sun Jan 16, 2022 12:12 am To be fair, Wikipedia is rubbish too, but it sounds like that book somehow exceeds it.

I disagree with bradrn about Wikipedia (and we have discussed this before). Wikipedia can be an EXCELLENT resource, particularly for people starting out in conlanging/linguistics.

Academic papers, including grammars of individual languages, are the highest quality resource. Since they are written by experts and peer-reviewed by other experts, you can rely on them to provide good information. There will be some topics where the scholars disagree on a topic, and you thus see conflicting information, but that will usually be an extremely narrow, advanced topic that won't have a lot of bearing on conlanging, especially when starting out. There are many academic articles and books to be found online, but there are also lots that you will have to either purchase or have university library access to get them. Not everyone has that, so you may have to turn to other resources.

This is where Wikipedia comes in. Its advantages are that it is free, easily accessible by anyone with internet, covers a very broad range of linguistics topics, does so in a way that give a good overview of a topic (good for beginning linguists), and links to related topics (also very good for beginning linguists) to help provide context and show how topics are related. Along with Wikipedia, I would include other similar "wiki" type sites such as the SIL.org Glossary of Linguistic Terms.

The downside of Wikipedia is that the articles aren't necessarily written by qualified scholars or reviewed by qualified scholars. That means some info there might not be accurate, or at least not to the level of academic writing (which is NOT necessary for this activity). Don't let that deter you; most of the information there is good information. Use it to get a base level of knowledge on a topic, and then see if you can find some academic references on that same topic to back it up if you can. For example, in other threads, I have been discussing consonant mutation and gradation. The Wikipedia articles on consonant mutation and consonant gradation have been highly useful, but I have relied on academic papers as well such as the The Historical Origin of Consonant Mutation in the Atlantic Languages paper that I linked in both threads.

If you find discrepancies between sources, generally assume the more academic is correct, but feel free to ask on the forum, much like you have already done here. Lots of members who have been conlanging for a while still do that - I do, for example! The topic is so broad that it's difficult to have a solid grasp of all of it.

It sort of comes down to media literacy. Be able to judge the quality and reliability of the sources you are using. That will come with experience and you do more reading & learning about linguistics. I would just argue that it's not black & white. Just because a certain resource is not perfect (which doesn't actually exist) does not mean that it's garbage.

What can I do you for?
In dialects where you can say this, for is a postposition.

European languages almost exclusively use prepositions, except Finnish and Hungarian. But many will have 1-3 postpositions or at least examples of where something that is typically a preposition moves around.

Latin had mostly prepositions and like 3 postpositions. But it was unusual because its default word order was subject-object-verb and languages like that usually have postpositions, like Japanese and Korean. Languages usually have the same order of adposition+complement as they do verb+object. Just not in Europe.

vegfarandi wrote: ↑Sun Jan 16, 2022 12:55 pm What can I do you for?
In dialects where you can say this, for is a postposition.

Evidence, please. It always strikes me as a humorous perversion of "What can I do for you?". It's literal meaning is "For what can I penalise you?".

vegfarandi wrote: ↑Sun Jan 16, 2022 12:55 pm What can I do you for?
In dialects where you can say this, for is a postposition.

Not really— it's an idiom. Note that you can't use it with other verbs ("*What can I get you for"), or other objects ("*What can I do George for") or even the past tense ("*What did I do you for?").

Richard W wrote:Or two unless you exclude the possessive clitic.

Fair enough.

Moose-tache wrote:I would argue that "ago" is an adverb, since it behaves the same way as "hence" or "today."

"Adverb" is the trash bin of syntax, so this isn't saying much. "Ago" is certainly not like "today", as it can't stand alone: "*It happened ago". If you're thinking of something like "four years hence", I'm fine with calling "hence" a postposition there.

vegfarandi wrote: ↑Sun Jan 16, 2022 12:55 pm What can I do you for?
In dialects where you can say this, for is a postposition.

The object of for here is what, not you, and this is simple wh-fronting considering that.

Vardelm wrote: ↑Sun Jan 16, 2022 9:32 am I disagree with bradrn about Wikipedia (and we have discussed this before). Wikipedia can be an EXCELLENT resource, particularly for people starting out in conlanging/linguistics.

I thought so too, when I started out. Then I found some actually good resources and realised what I’d been missing.

Academic papers, including grammars of individual languages, are the highest quality resource. Since they are written by experts and peer-reviewed by other experts, you can rely on them to provide good information. There will be some topics where the scholars disagree on a topic, and you thus see conflicting information, but that will usually be an extremely narrow, advanced topic that won't have a lot of bearing on conlanging, especially when starting out.

When you can find them, even better are edited volumes and monographs, which cover a specific topic in great depth. Best are those written in a ‘tutorial style’: the three I always recommend are Dixon’s Basic Linguistic Theory, Payne’s Describing Morphosyntax, and ed. Shopen’s Language Typology and Syntactic Description.

This is where Wikipedia comes in. Its advantages are that it is free, easily accessible by anyone with internet, covers a very broad range of linguistics topics, does so in a way that give a good overview of a topic (good for beginning linguists), and links to related topics (also very good for beginning linguists) to help provide context and show how topics are related. Along with Wikipedia, I would include other similar "wiki" type sites such as the SIL.org Glossary of Linguistic Terms.

Some of the other Wiki-type sites can be pretty good — I like the SIL glossary. But Wikipedia itself I’ve found to be unreliable.

The downside of Wikipedia is that the articles aren't necessarily written by qualified scholars or reviewed by qualified scholars. That means some info there might not be accurate, or at least not to the level of academic writing (which is NOT necessary for this activity). Don't let that deter you; most of the information there is good information. Use it to get a base level of knowledge on a topic, and then see if you can find some academic references on that same topic to back it up if you can. For example, in other threads, I have been discussing consonant mutation and gradation. The Wikipedia articles on consonant mutation and consonant gradation have been highly useful, but I have relied on academic papers as well such as the The Historical Origin of Consonant Mutation in the Atlantic Languages paper that I linked in both threads.

This I can agree with, to some extent. But often the Wikipedia article on a subject is so disorganised, poorly-explained, Anglocentric, theory-focussed, or all four at the same time that it becomes nearly impossible to understand. (Not that academic articles don’t have these problems! But they tend to be higher quality, and there’s more of them.)

It sort of comes down to media literacy. Be able to judge the quality and reliability of the sources you are using. That will come with experience and you do more reading & learning about linguistics. I would just argue that it's not black & white. Just because a certain resource is not perfect (which doesn't actually exist) does not mean that it's garbage.

I can agree with this also. Sadly, Wikipedia does, truly, tend to be garbage. (There are exceptions! The article on relative clauses is excellent. So are those on Austronesian alignment and aktionsart. But most of the others are varying degrees of horrible.)

Travis B. wrote: ↑Sun Jan 16, 2022 3:59 pm

vegfarandi wrote: ↑Sun Jan 16, 2022 12:55 pm What can I do you for?
In dialects where you can say this, for is a postposition.

The object of for here is what, not you, and this is simple wh-fronting considering that.

Er no, it's a jocular variation of "What can I do for you?"

("do for X" exists, but it means something completely different-- do (something) for a reward or payment, e.g. "do it for money", "do it for love". The answer to "What can I do you for?" is the service requested, not a payment.)

TIL the phrase "What can I do you for" is extremely confusing to non-Americans. Wait will they hear about "I could care less."!

Moose-tache wrote: ↑Mon Jan 17, 2022 12:05 am TIL the phrase "What can I do you for" is extremely confusing to non-Americans. Wait will they hear about "I could care less."!

I am an American and "What can I do you for?" confuses me!

(From looking it up it seemed to mean "What can I arrest you for?" but apparently that's wrong.)

zompist wrote: ↑Sun Jan 16, 2022 5:41 pm Er no, it's a jocular variation of "What can I do for you?"

This is the way I have heard it used, and use it myself. It's meant to convey a level of silliness due to it being (usually) ungrammatical, but still understood as "what can I do for you?". Another aspect to the humor driving it might be a double entendre of "doing someone", which means either killing them or having sex with them.

zompist wrote: ↑Sun Jan 16, 2022 5:41 pm

Travis B. wrote: ↑Sun Jan 16, 2022 3:59 pm

vegfarandi wrote: ↑Sun Jan 16, 2022 12:55 pm What can I do you for?
In dialects where you can say this, for is a postposition.

The object of for here is what, not you, and this is simple wh-fronting considering that.

Er no, it's a jocular variation of "What can I do for you?"

("do for X" exists, but it means something completely different-- do (something) for a reward or payment, e.g. "do it for money", "do it for love". The answer to "What can I do you for?" is the service requested, not a payment.)

Mind blown. I thought it was dialectal variation of the order from the South. In Icelandic, the preposition vegna 'because of' can act as a postposition. I thought it was a similar thing.