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

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