number of prepositions in Russian

[Frank Gladney]

In _Case in Slavic_ ed. Richard Brecht and James Levine (Slavica 1986), I address this question.  If you open an Academy grammar to the index and look under Predlog, you'll find hundreds.  When is some other part of speech, which is "used as a proposition", to be considered a preposition?  In English, is _behind_ one?  Are _concerning_ and _regarding_ prepositions?  How about _in connection with_?  The Russian grammarians say yes in each case, and that's because if your specialty is prepositions, the more there are the more important your specialty.  If you're a hammer, a lot of protuberances look like nails.

Frank Y. Gladney

---- Original message ----
>Date: Wed, 25 May 2011 13:48:13 -0500
>From: Nina Wieda <ninawieda2008 at U.NORTHWESTERN.EDU>  
>Subject: [SEELANGS] number of prepositions in Russian  
>To: SEELANGS at bama.ua.edu
>
>Dear colleagues,
>
>Bracing up for his struggle with Russian prepositions, a student asked me
>how many prepositions the Russian language has.  Can anyone suggest a source
>that would give an estimate? I have found numerous classifications, but no
>overall number.
>
>Thank you in advance!
>
>All the best,
>Nina Wieda
>-- 
>Nina Wieda, Ph.D.
>Slavic Languages and Literatures
>Northwestern University
>4-130 Crowe Hall
>1860 Campus Drive
>Evanston, IL 60208
>
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