Re: The Shift of Antecedent Prepositions to Suffixes ????

Hi,

Hungarian, Finnish, Turkish and (IIRC) Korean all have postpositions,
and I'm sure there are many more examples.

My own Conlang - Tesk - switched from prepositions to postpositions,
mainly under Turkish influence, if that's any encouragement!  I remember
(this all happened years ago) that I was also influenced by the kind of
construction seen in German: Ich gehe die Strasse entlang (sorry if I'm
making mistakes) =~ I walk along the street.  Also in German I was
fascinated by constructions like darueber, herunter which seem to embody
postpositions.

I think your posited change of or mar > *maror is quite possible.
Perhaps (as in Tesk) it would happen in the context of a general shift
of the language, in my case - from SVO to SOV.



> -----Original Message-----
> From: Constructed Languages List
> [mailto:CONLANG@LISTSERV.BROWN.EDU] On Behalf Of Nicolas Walker
> Sent: Saturday, January 22, 2005 2:40 PM
> To: CONLANG@LISTSERV.BROWN.EDU
> Subject: The Shift of Antecedent Prepositions to Suffixes ????
>
>
> Dear All,
>
> A question for the assembled knowledg of the list (of which I
> am constantly in awe!).
>
> Is it all possible that a preposition may (with time) affix
> iself to the END of the word it acts upon, even if its former
> position was at its head? E.g. could 'or (loc.prep.) mar
> (=house)' become 'maror'? If so, is such a change likely?
> Surely 'ormar' is infinately more probable!
>
> A small follow uo question: can anybody furnish me with some
> examples of languages (preferably natural)in which
> prepositions do indeed follow the noun ?
>
> Please advise.
>
> Cheers
>
> Nic
>

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