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<font face="Arial Unicode MS">Dear Martin,<br>
sure, it seems to make sense to search for a term that covers the
functional commonalities of synthetic cases and what you call
adpositions. Personally, I frequently refer to this aspect with the
help of the term '<b>referential echoes</b>' (as opposed to <b>referential
echoes</b> that copy properties of referential entities onto the verbal
domain). Relational echoes thus copy inherent verbal properties such as
features of actancy, localization etc. onto the referential domain. The
problem I see is to put pre- and postpostions into a single category
(adpositions). Even though they seem to share certain functional
features they are nevertheless of rather heterogenous nature: As far as
I can see, prepositions stand in a much closer relationship with the
verbal nucleus than postpositions (in fact, I treat prepositions
usually as being a part of the verbal domain). Postpositions, on the
other hand, are strongly referential in nature, often linked to their
head in terms of a covert or overt possessive relation (or in terms of
an appositional relation). Thus the 'relational echo' shows up with
postpositions either through case-marking on the postposition or merely
through the syntactic arrangement. <br>
Best whishes,<br>
Wolfgang <br>
</font><br>
Martin Haspelmath schrieb:<br>
<blockquote type="cite" cite="mid44B37512.5060503@eva.mpg.de">I have a
terminological question:
<br>
<br>
Cases and adpositions have many properties in common, so it is useful
to have a term for a broader concept that includes both. I know of
three proposals for such a broader concept:
<br>
<br>
(1) relator
<br>
(2) flag
<br>
(3) case
<br>
<br>
I'm interested in places in the literature where one of these three
choices has been explicitly adopted, and of course in alternatives that
I don't know about.
<br>
<br>
I have used (2) ("flag") myself in recent work (a 2005 paper published
in "Linguistic Discovery", see
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://linguistic-discovery.dartmouth.edu/cgi-bin/WebObjects/Journals.woa/xmlpage/1/issue">http://linguistic-discovery.dartmouth.edu/cgi-bin/WebObjects/Journals.woa/xmlpage/1/issue</a>),
but I know that I didn't invent it. I think I have heard it in the
context of Relational Grammar.
<br>
<br>
(3) is clearly the most widespread -- people routinely refer to
adpositional markers as "case markers", but it has the disadvantage of
introducing a polysemy of the term "case" (unless one abandons the old
case concept and only talks about "analytic cases" and "synthetic
cases"). Still, I'm interested in places in the literature where this
terminological choice is explicitly adopted.
<br>
<br>
Thanks,
<br>
Martin
<br>
<br>
</blockquote>
<br>
<pre class="moz-signature" cols="72">--
Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Schulze
Institut fuer Allgemeine und Vergleichende Sprachwissenschaft
Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitaet Muenchen
Geschwister-Scholl-Platz 1
D-80539 Muenchen
Tel.: ++49-(0)89-2180-2486 (Sekr.)
Tel.: ++49-(0)89-2180-5343 (Office)
Fax : ++49-(0)89-2180-5345
E-mail: <a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:W.Schulze@lrz.uni-muenchen.de">W.Schulze@lrz.uni-muenchen.de</a>
Web: <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.ats.lmu.de./index.php">http://www.ats.lmu.de./index.php</a></pre>
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