preposition iteration

[Henning Andersen]

Robert Beard's note on preposition iteration--or prep rep(etition), as it
is sometimes called--reminds me of another obscure morphologist who has
touched on this matter in print.

The Common Slavic, but especially East Slavic, iteration of prepositions
was interpreted as a variety of case agreement in a review I published in
Language 47.949-954 (1971). There I suggested that it developed in response
to (substratum) contact with Finnic or (Finnicized) Baltoid languages
having a rich inventory of local cases. The several local cases in Old
Lithuanian, largely lost in the modern language, bear witness to a slightly
different, but in principle analogous response to the same contact pressure
in Baltic. It is closer to the Finnic model in that it involves the use of
postpositions.

H

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