[Lingtyp] complex postpositions

Sun Feb 3 16:24:36 UTC 2019

Dear Colleagues,

Two thoughts came to my mind. First, are we all in agreement as to what
counts a postposition? In the 6th edition of his *Dictionary of Linguistics
and Phonetics*, David Crystal (2008: 377) writes, the term “postposition”
is used “in the grammatical classification of words” to refer to “the
closed set of items which follow noun phrases (or single nouns or pronouns)
to form a single constituent of structure.” So clearly Crystal intends
postpositions to be words. If words are necessarily free, then by Crystal’s
definition postpositions must be free linguistic forms. By the same
definition, many so-called postpositions like the case markers used in
Japanese are not true postpositions, as they are bound morphemes. (If
possible, Nigel might share his conception about the notion of
“postposition.”)

Second, the linguistic forms denoting spatial relations used after a
nominal root in Mandarin Chinese are typically referred to as “localizers.”
Their analyses vary from researcher to researcher, and their status ranges
from postposition, suffix, to clitic in different descriptions and analyses
of these linguistic forms. Some analyze these forms as forming a
circumposition with the general preposition 在*zài* (which is used to
indicate location or time), and some others disagree with such a
circumpositional analysis. So the status of these spatial forms used after
a nominal root is controversial in Chinese linguistics, and the controversy
is closely related to the conceptions of the notions like postposition,
suffix, clitic, and circumposition. Therefore, in the end explicit
definitions (that are agreed upon at least by the majority of us, if
possible) do not just matter and they matter a lot in linguistic studies in
general and in crosslinguistic comparisons and typological studies in
particular, as Martin has repeatedly argued and reminded us.

Best regards,

Chao

On Sun, Feb 3, 2019 at 10:39 AM Spike Gildea <spike at uoregon.edu> wrote:

> In the Cariban family, there is a small set of monomorphemic
> postpositions, with all the rest formed from relational nouns plus suffixes
> expressing static location or path (allative, perlative, ablative).
> Derbyshire (1985: 205-219) gives a long list of nouns plus case suffixes
> (his "Relator forms”) and Meira (1999: 399-411) gives quite a few examples
> of what he calls “derived postpositions” in Cariban language
> Tiriyó. Derbyshire (1999: 42-43) gives a first indication of the
> comparative system, but limits his examples to 15 postpositions in four
> languages.
>
> In work in progress, my student Jordan Douglas has identified over 100
> postposition cognate sets in the family, of which the great majority
> reconstruct as composed from a (possessed) relational noun stem plus a
> postpositional suffix. If you want more information, write to me directly.
>
> Best,
> Spike
>
> Derbyshire, Desmond C. 1999. Carib. *The Amazonian Languages*. Ed. by
> Dixon, R.M.W., & Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald. Cambridge: Cambridge University
> Press.
> Derbyshire, Desmond C. 1985. *Hixkaryana and Linguistic Typology*.
> Dallas: University of Texas at
> Arlington and the Summer Institute of Linguistics.
> Meira, Sérgio. 1999. *A Grammar of Tiriyó*. Houston: Rice University
> Doctoral Dissertation.
>
> On Feb 3, 2019, at 6:33 AM, LIU Danqing <liudanq at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> Dear Colleagues:
>
>   The complex adpositions in Chinese basically exist in the form of
> circumpositions, with a preposition denoting thematic roles and a
> postposition conveying locative information. For instance:
>
> Mandarin: wo  zai shu-shang xie-zi
>           I    at book-on   write-characters
>
> In some cases, the preposition is optional while the postposition is
> obligatory. So the circumposition is a temporary combination instead of a
> lexical item. Most postpositions came from locative relational nouns.
>
> There are several circumpositions which denote relations other than
> spatial ones. For example:
>
>     Ta gen huli shide jiaohua.
>     He with fox-like   sly
>
> In my book published  in Chinese, *Word Order Typology and Adposition
> Theories* (2003), I offered a detailed description regarding adpositions
> in Mandarin and a number of Wu dialects including Shanghainese. There are a
> Japanese edition published in Japan and a Korean edition published in
> Korea, but no English edition, yet. I'm sorry for that.
>
> Danny Liu
>
>
> On Sunday, February 3, 2019, 9:51:55 PM GMT+8, Martin Haspelmath <
> haspelmath at shh.mpg.de> wrote:
>
>
> It seems to me that the great majority of languages have „complex
> adpositions“ of the Japanese type, i.e. noun-like forms which combine with
> their complements in an adpossessive-like way (either genitive flagging on
> the complement, or indexing on the „adposition“, or both).
>
> Peter Svenonius has coined the term „axial“ for such forms (as mentioned
> by Anders Holmberg), which seems a nice addition to our terminology - these
> axial nouns typically mean ‚in front/in back‘, ‚above/below‘, and
> ‚inside/outside‘ (true, only the first two are axes in the strict sense).
>
> In European languages, one usually finds non-axials (i.e. non-noun-like
> prepositions) for such notions - including some „complex adverbial
> prepositions“ (e.g. French au dessus de ‚above‘), but I would venture the
> following claim:
>
> Outside of Europe, spatial relations of the type ‚front/above/inside’ are
> almost always expressed by axial nouns.
>
> There is surprisingly little systematic cross-linguistic research on
> axials, so this is just my impression (there was a 1993 book by Soteria
> Svorou, but it focused on semantic developments, not on morphosyntax).
>
> Best,
> Martin
>
> Am 03.02.2019 um 14:20 schrieb Alice Vittrant- Villejuif <
> vittrant at vjf.cnrs.fr>:
>
> Dear Nigel,
>
> This kind of complex appositions is related to the Relator Nouns issue (or
> 'Noms de Localisation Interne’ issue). See for instance Delancey 1997,
> Aurnague 1989, 1996, Aurnague & al 2000 and Borillo 1988 (in french).
> They are quite frequent in Southeast Asian languages. See for instance
> Burmese and Thaï chapters in Vittrant & Watkins (eds)(2019).
>
> Best,
> Alice
>
> -----
>
>
> DeLancey, Scott. « Grammaticalization and the Gradience of Categories :
> Relator Nouns and Postpositions in Tibetan and Burmese ». In *Essays on
> language function and language type: dedicated to T. Givón*, édité par
> Joan L. Bybee, John Haiman, et Sandra A. Thompson, Johns Benjamins., 51‑69.
> Amsterdam, 1997.
>
> Borillo, Andrée. « Le lexique de l’espace : les noms et les adjectifs de
> localisation interne ». *Cahiers de Grammaire* 13 (1988): 1‑22.
>
> Aurnague, Michel. 1989. Catégorisation des objets dans le langage: Les
> noms et les adjectifs de localisation interne. Cahiers de Grammaire 14.
> 1–21. Toulouse: UTM.
>
> Aurnague, Michel. « Les Noms de Localisation Interne: tentative de
> caractérisation sémantique à partir de données du basque et du français ». *Cahiers
> de Lexicologie* 69 (1996): 159‑92.
>
> Aurnague, M., K. Boulanouar, J.-L. Nespoulous, A. Borillo & M. Borillo.
> 2000. Spatial semantics:the processing of Internal Localization Nouns.
> Cahiers de Psychologie Cognitive/ Current Psychology of Cognition 19 (1).
> 69–110.
>
> Vittrant, Alice, et Justin Watkins, eds. *The Mainland Southeast Asia
> Linguistic Area*. Trends in Linguistics. Studies and Monographs [TiLSM]
> 314. Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter Mouton, 2019.
>
> Le 2 févr. 2019 à 21:57, Nigel Vincent <nigel.vincent at MANCHESTER.AC.UK
> <nigel.vincent at manchester.ac.uk>> a écrit :
>
> There is a substantial literature on prepositions and postpositions. There
> is also a growing body of work on complex prepositions, i.e. things like
> English 'in front of', French 'au dessous de'. To complete the picture I'd
> be grateful for pointers to studies and/or examples of complex
> postpositions.
> Thanks in advance
> Nigel
>
>
> Professor Nigel Vincent, FBA MAE
> Professor Emeritus of General & Romance Linguistics
> The University of Manchester
>
> Linguistics & English Language
> School of Arts, Languages and Cultures
> The University of Manchester
>
>
>
>
> https://www.research.manchester.ac.uk/portal/en/researchers/nigel-vincent(f973a991-8ece-453e-abc5-3ca198c869dc).html
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>
> -------------------
> Alice Vittrant
> Université d'Aix-Marseille / CNRS-DDL (UMR 5596)
>
> alice.vittrant at univ-amu.fr
> alice.vittrant at cnrs.fr
>
> *Site personnel *:
> http://www.ddl.ish-lyon.cnrs.fr/AliceVittrant
> https://univ-amu.academia.edu/AliceVittrant
>
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