Re: Syntactic Differentiation of Adverbial vs. Adjectival Adpositions

I think Japanese also makes this distinction. I always observe "no," a
genitive postposition, added to postpositional phrases with an adjectival
sense.

E.g., "(I) ate the fruit on the table (I performed the act of eating on the
table)"
teeburu no ue de kudamono wo tabemashita.
table GEN over at fruit ACC eat.POLITE.PAST

"(I) ate the fruit on the table (the fruit was on the table)"
teeburu no ue no kudamono wo tabemashita.
table GEN over GEN fruit ACC eat.POLITE.PAST

There's also,
"(I) received a letter from mother"
okaasan kara tegami wo moraimashita
mother from letter ACC receive.POLITE.PAST

vs.

"the letter from mother"
okaasan kara no tegami
mother from GEN letter

...where "no" follows another postposition "kara" (from) to show the phrase
"from mother" is an attribute of the letter.

I've never heard of the syntactic device you proposed. Interestingly, a book
I have mentions Western Armenian has some adpositions that can be used as
either prepositions or postpositions, but there doesn't seem to be any
difference in meaning depending on which way they're used.

-- 
Damátir Ando,
Creator of Çomyopregi and Sopih
rodkaromanovich@gmail.com
http://www.geocities.com/rodionraskolnikov2000/