query

[bingfu]

On Sun, 25 Oct 1998, Maria Polinsky wrote:

> I am looking for languages (other than English and Scandinavian) which
> have
> productive preposition stranding. Any suggestions?
>
> Maria Polinsky
>
The following may be related to the above phenomenon.
Tsunoda et al. (1995: 759) observe that adposition stranding is
found in a fair number of prepositional languages, but rarely found in
postpositional languages.  In 130 languages they investigated, stranding
is explicitly attested in 8-10 % of the prepositional languages, but
dubiously only 2% of the postpositional languages.  The stranding
phenomenon suggests that postpositions are more bound than prepositions in
general.  This may be a by-phenomenon of the tendency that 'postposed
grammatical material is more likely to affix than preposed grammatical
materials' (Bybee 1990:3).  In other words, a postpositional bound
morpheme appears more bound than its semantically counterpart
prepositional morpheme.
Tsunoda, Tasaku; Yoshiaki Itoh; and Sumie Ueda. 1955.Adpositions in word
order typology. Linguistics, Vol.33, No.4:741-61.

Bingfu Lu

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> Department of Linguistics		(619)534-4789 (fax)
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>
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>