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

Andreas Johansson wrote:
> Quoting R A Brown <ray@...>:
[snip]
>>Which must surely mean that Dryer considers _'s_ in "The guy next door's
>>wife" to be a postposition; but it's generally considered to be clitic.
>
> Dryer's wording surely indicates that he considers it to be BOTH a clitic AND a
> postposition.
I've just re-read the opening part Dryer's paper again and while he well
consider _'s_ to be a clitic, he does not treat it as an adposition in
his paper and, therefore, not as a postposition. I quote:
"A word is treated here as an adposition (preposition or postposition)
if it combines with a noun phrase and indicates the grammatical or
semantic relationship of that noun phrase to the verb in the clause."
-------------------------------------

Eldin Raigmore wrote:
 > First off: I am still mostly interested in:
 > (1) What is cross-linguistically common among postpositions in
prepositional  languages?

Personally, I doubt if there is anything common other than the existence
of a few postpositions in a predominantly prepositional language. Both
Latin & classical Greek are predominantly prepositional and both have
postpositions. But I see nothing common to the post positions of both
languages.

 > (2) What is cross-linguistically common among prepositions in
postpositional  languages?

I'm not familiar enough with postpositional languages to comment except
to say that I strongly suspect we'll find a similar lack of commonality
of prepositions in those languages.

But Dryer's paper simply does not address the issue that you are
primarily concerned with. He mentions this in the last paragraph on the
first page, but does not deal with what might cross-linguistically common.

[snip]
 >
 > About inpositions:  As others have pointed out I misunderstood Dryer.
  As I
 > now understand it (assuming that even now I understand correctly),
for him to
 > count something as an adposition _in_that_paper_, it has to be a
case-marker
 > which is either a free word or a clitic, whose position (relative to
the noun-
 > phrase which is its complement) is _syntactically_ determined (rather
than, I
 > assume, _morphologically_ determined).

That is not what I understand. I do not read "has to be" but rather
"occur or can occur"; I quote:
"The map also shows a rare type of adposition, what I will call
inpositions, adpositions which occur or can occur inside the noun phrase
they accompany."

I have already shown that by that definition, classical Latin had these
so-called inpositions. I have also said that I am not convinced by what
Dryer writes in this paper that inpositions are really a separate
category of adposition.

[snip]
 > A case-marker which always is inserted into its complement noun-phrase,
 > Dryer calls an inposition for purposes of this paper.  Perhaps it is
always the
 > second word; perhaps it is always the next-to-last word; perhaps it
is always
 > enclitic on the first word, whether or not that's the noun (provided
it isn't
 > always the noun); perhaps it is always proclitic on the second word,
whether
 > or not that's the noun (provided it isn't always the noun); perhaps
it is always
 > proclitic on the last word, whether or not that's the noun (provided
it isn't
 > always the noun); perhaps it's always enclitic on the penultimate word,
 > whether or not that's the noun (provided it isn't always the noun).

That is certainly not what I understand from Dryer's words and two
examples.

Firstly, as I have pointed out, he says quite explicitly "adpositions
which occur _or can occur_ inside the noun phrase they accompany"
[emphasis is mine}. He clearly does not say that it is always inserted
in the noun phrase.

It would seem to me that you have extrapolated what he says about the
Australian language Anindilyakwa to inpositions generally. Dryer does
not do that. Indeed his example from Tümpisa Shoshone is _not_ shown as
a clitic, nor the adposition _ma_ termed a case marker by Dryer. Indeed,
it is surely clear from what he goes onto to write, that he does _not_
consider it a case marker. I quote:
"Note that the inpositions in Tümpisa Shoshone govern the objective case
on pronouns, nouns, and their modifiers (though the case is often null,
as in the noun _ohipim_ 'cold'), as shown on the postnominal modifier in
(5)."

The postnominal modifier he refers to is _-nna_ which is appended to the
adjective _natii'iwantü_ 'mean'.

Surely what we have here is what we are familiar with in German,
Russian, Latin, Greek (both ancient & modern) etc. where nouns etc have
case markers (i.e. the case endings), and adpositions govern particular
cases.

As I have said before, I do not see how essentially the Tümpisa Shoshone
example Dryer quotes differs, in respect to 'inpositions', from Latin
phrases like: multis cum lacrimis.

[snip]

 > This still doesn't answer Ray's doubts about the existence of
inpositions.  But
 > notice that in Dryer's 1047-language sample he found only 7 languages in
 > which "inpositions" were the dominant type of adposition.

Even Dryer admits it's a pretty rare animal. But what I said is that I
do not find his two examples convincing evidence that we need a third
category of adposition, namely 'inposition.' One would dearly like to
know a good deal more about the structure of Tümpisa Shoshone and the
six Australian languages that are claimed to be 'inposition dominant.'

Hopefully, Dirk can shed more light on Tümpisa Shoshone. Do we have
anyone with expertise in native Australian languages?

[snip]

 > It also makes it extremely unlikely that it would even be possible to
define
 > a "superposition" or a "transposition" that would fit Dryer's paper's
definition of
 > an adposition.

On this I agree    :)

[snip]
 >
 > I have seen adpositions which can occur as either pre- or post-
 > called "circumpositions".  I have also seen obligatorily-paired pre-
and post- -
 > positions called "circumpositions".  IMO it would be good to have
different
 > terms for the two ideas.  I think the obligatorily-paired pre- and
post- -
 > position has the better claim on the term "circumposition"; and some
other
 > term should be used for the adpositions which can be either
prepositions or
 > postpositions.

On this I also agree.

 > But I do not know what to call them.

'ambipositions'??? But my own feeling is that it is an unfortunate
chance of history that we've finished up with the three terms
'preposition', 'postposition' and 'adposition'. It would have been much
better IMO if there were one single term (such as 'relator').

After all we just use the single term 'adjective'; we do not say that
English had 'prejectives' which French favors 'postjectives'! We say
that in a certain language adjectives normally precede their nouns while
in another language they normally follow their nouns. It seems to me
singularly odd that for the group of words we term 'adpositions' we have
to resort to terms that have nothing to do with their function but only
with their position.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
 >
 > Lastly I wish to point out: I am still mostly interested in:
 > (1) What is cross-linguistically common among postpositions in
prepositional  languages?
 > (2) What is cross-linguistically common among prepositions in
postpositional languages?

If this is so, then it seems to me that Dryer's paper has thrown us off
the track. But my own feeling is that (1) is like looking for what is
cross-linguistically common among post-posited adjectives in those
languages that normally put adjectives before nouns; and that (2) is
like looking for what is cross-linguistically common among pre-posited
adjectives in languages where adjectives normally follow their nouns*.


*Oh yes, there is of course a commonality among the Romance languages,
but move along and consider, say, Welsh, and the commonality begins to
wear a bit thin.


--
Ray
==================================
ray@carolandray.plus.com
http://www.carolandray.plus.com
==================================
Entia non sunt multiplicanda
praeter necessitudinem.



--
Ray
==================================
ray@carolandray.plus.com
http://www.carolandray.plus.com
==================================
Entia non sunt multiplicanda
praeter necessitudinem.

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