Re: Lin: Postpositions

At 5:55 pm -0500 2/4/02, Christopher B Wright wrote:
>Reimond Bron sekalge:
>| Lin doesn't use prepositions (i.e. particles placed before noun
>phrases)
>| but postpositions.  These are always one-letter words which are
>immediately
>| preceded by {`}, e.g.
>| London`a = to London
>
>That must be difficult. You couldn't manage more than (at the furthest)
>about eighty postpositions in the whole language, more likely closer to
>thirty.
I make it 49.

>How do you cope?
I don't - it's R. Srikanth's language, not mine.

BUT -
Latin had IIRC 41 prepositions.

Ancient Greek got by with about 25, tho if you count, e.g. pros+ACC,
pros+GEN & pros+DAT as three prepositions, the number goes up to just over
40.

My modern Greek grammar lists only 6 prepositions in common use; the modern
Greeks, it seems, preferring to use compounds made up of an adverb with
either {es} "in, to", {apo} "from" or {me} "with".  The French grammar I
have lists only 28 simple prepositions; and my Welsh grammar has a mere 17
simple preposition.

German seems to do best.  My german grammar lists 15 with the genitive, 17
with the dative, 8 with the accusative & 8 with accusative or dative = 48
in toto - and Lin could cope with that?

I haven't had time to go through the other grammars I have, but I'd be
mighty suprised if I found any that had more than 50; and I don't think
English is exactly overburdened with them.

Personally, I do see what the problem is.

Ray.




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