inflected postpositions

[Stephen Matthews]

Dear all,
It may be of interest to point out that inflected postpositions represent a
head-marking pattern in the sense of Nichols (1986, 1992 etc). In German,
postpositions govern a certain case, which is indicated by the case
inflection of the governed NP: 

mir gegenüber
me-DAT opposite

The PP is therefore dependent-marked. The corresponding Hungarian PP is
head-marked as the same grammatical relation is marked on the head P: 

alatt-am
under-1sg

What makes this interesting is that head-marking patterns often seem to go
together, though the explanation may be relatively 'shallow', e.g. in
Hungarian, it is esentially the same set of person agreement affixes which
reappears in a number of configurations including possessive NPs, object
agreement on transitive verbs, and agreement on postpositions. Indeed,
Rounds (2001: 158) actually describes the inflected postposition by noting
that "postpositions may also add possessive suffixes". Richard Valovics
also mentions an archaic pattern with both case-marking and agreement:

Péter-nek alatt-a.
Peter-DAT under-3sg
'under Peter'

In terms of Nichols' typology this is a double-marked pattern, again (as
Richard notes) parallel to the possessive construction as in:

Péter-nek a láb-a.
Peter-DET the foot-3sg
'Peter's foot'

Another property which may be relevant to Mexico is that head-marking is a
highly areal charactisteristic. In Meso-America, Nichols (1992: 71) shows 7
languages in which PP is head-marking vs. 0 in which it is dependent-marking. 

Nichols, Johanna. 1992. Linguistic Diversity in Time and Space. Chicago
University Press.
Rounds, Carol. 2001. Hungarian: An Essential Grammar. Routledge. 
 
Stephen Matthews
Linguistics Department
University of Hong Kong


At 05:55 PM 12/7/2003 +0100, Richard Valovics wrote:
>Dear Steve,
>
>Hungarian is one such language. Most postpositions,
>namely those that take their complement in the
>nominative, (and for that matter also most case
>suffixes) are inflected for person and number. For this
>reason, the complement can often be left out: alatt-am
>(under me), alatt-ad (under you), alatt-a (under
>him/her/it), alatt-unk (under us), etc.
>Two remarks may be important. Hungarian postpositions
>indeed derive from nouns. And when the complement is an
>explicit noun, the postpositions are not inflected in
>the modern standard language: Péter alatt (under Peter).
>Though, in archaic style and possibly in dialects it is
>possible: Péter-nek alatt-a. (-nek is the dative, which
>case is often used to mark the possessor.)
>I don't know of cases of stranded postpositions in
>Hungarian.
>Best regards
>Richard
>
>-----Oprindelig meddelelse-----
>Fra: "Steve Marlett" <steve_marlett at SIL.ORG>
>Til: "LINGTYP at LISTSERV.LINGUISTLIST.ORG"
><LINGTYP at LISTSERV.LINGUISTLIST.ORG>
>Emne: inflected postpositions, stranded postpositions
>Dato: 11-12-2003 13:14:47
>
>Dear LingTypers:
>
>I am looking for languages with postpositions that are
>inflected for the person (and perhaps number) of their
>complement. I suspect that there may be a terminological
>matter to deal with (some have called them relational
>nouns --- but that term goes in other directions as
>well).
>
>I am also looking for languages in which the
>postposition may be "stranded" when the complement
>occurs elsewhere in the sentence. 
>
>If anyone has some suggested places to look for these, I
>would appreciate it. (I will be presenting a paper about
>this topic at the next SSILA meeting, relating to one
>language in Mexico.)
>
>--Steve
>steve_marlett at sil.org