Re: THEORY: Adpositional Heads

--- Rob Haden <magwich78@...> wrote:
> In the grammars of most languages, when
> discussiong adpositional (post-
> /prepositional) phrases, the adpositions are
> treated as the heads.  What's
> the reasoning for this?  It seems
> counter-intuitive to me.  My opinion is
> that, at least in many languages (like
> English), the "objects" of the
> adpositional phrases are the heads, and the
> adpositions themselves are
> modifiers.  What do y'all think?
I guess that makes sense in typical grammatical
formats.

I've done some looking into native grammatical
systems devised by speakers of my conlangs. The
fullest example I have on hand is that devised
for Talarian by Telerani scholars. For them, it
is totally intuitive to consider the
postpositions the "heads" in adpositional
phrases. What's more, they don't ascribe these
words mere modifier roles; they are the
"authorities", the words that regulate the roles
of the substantive words (nouns and verbs). From
their perspective, language happens because of
these authorities. Otherwise, it's just a string
of unconnected words.

Padraic.


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