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Re: THEORY: Xpositions in Ypositional languages {X,Y}={pre,post}

From:Andreas Johansson <andjo@...>
Date:Sunday, September 23, 2007, 9:19
Quoting Eldin Raigmore <eldin_raigmore@...>:

> ---In conlang@yahoogroups.com, Andreas Johansson <andjo@...> wrote: > >Quoting Eldin Raigmore <eldin_raigmore@...>: > >>(As near as I can tell nobody thinks there are suprapositions or > >>transpositions.) > >A supraposition, I suppose, is a suprasegmental feature that serves > >the function of an adposition, > > Right, basically a "suprafixed adposition". > > >but what is a transposition? > > Some people sometimes refer to what happens in the Triconsonantal Root > Systems of some Afro-Asiatic languages as "transfixes". By parallel with > prepositions, postpositions, inpositions, and circumpositions, I made up the > terms "supraposition" and "transposition" to mean a "a suprafixed adposition" > and "a transfixed adposition".
Thanks. Well then, to differ from a case transfix a "transposition" would have to apply to an entre noun phrase, not just a single noun. Intuitively, I find that highly unlikely.
> >I was going to say I could easily imagine a supraposition, supposing > >my supposition as to meaning be correct, coming into existence from > >a postposition first becoming asyllabic and then turning into a > >toneme - imagine a development like _aba su_ > _abas_ > _abà_ where > >_aba_ is some noun and the grave is low tone - but then it struck me > >if we discover such a beast in the wild, we would likely call it a > >case-form, not an adpositional phrase, at least by the third stage. > > Dryer's paper says that many of the things he calls "adpositions" for > purposes > of this paper are sometimes called other things (e.g. "relators") by some > other > authors. He goes on to say that adpositions and case-affixes are included in > a > somewhat larger class he calls "case markers". So, yes, for purposes of this > paper, I suppose a suprafixed case-marker would count as a supraposition > (though nobody actually uses that term); a transfixed case-marker would > count as a transposition (though aren't the Semitic triconsonantal roots > mostly > verb-roots? so natlangishly attested transfixes are mostly in conjugations > rather than in declensions?); an infixed case-marker counts as an inposition; > a > circumfixed case-marker counts as a circumpositions; etc.
Here I must disagree. Dryer: "case affixes are not treated as adpositions on this map". In-, supra-, and transfixes are affixes or analogues of affixes, and so surely are analoguously considered not to be in-, supra-, and transpositions. -
> >I guess I should go read the paper you linked to and find out > >exactly why > > >Dyer > > "Dryer", n'est-ce pas?
Yes: typo.
> >thinks the Tagalog inpositions are just that > > I've read it. I'm not confident I've understood it, but I think I could if I > tried > hard enough long enough often enough.
As Ray pointed out, there are no Tagalog examples in the paper you cited.
> >and not case inflections. > > I think he might think some of them are inpositions _as_well_as_ case- > inflections, rather than _instead_of_ case-inflections.
Dryer distinguishes between adpositions and case affixes as the two classes of "case markers". By "case inflection" I meant something very much like his "case affix", so presumably he would deny anything could be both an inposition and a case inflection. But as said, there's no Tagalog in the pdf ... Andreas