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

This is about prepositions in postpositional languages, and postpositions in
prepositional languages.

Some of my questions were apparently answered in a paper by Dryer,
http://linguistics.buffalo.edu/people/faculty/dryer/dryer/DryerWalsAdpNoMap.pd
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On Thu, 20 Sep 2007 19:18:50 -0400, Eldin Raigmore
<eldin_raigmore@...> wrote:
>Is it true that in nearly every natural language, either nearly every adposition
>is a Preposition and the language is clearly Prepositional, or else nearly every
>adposition is a Postposition and the language is clearly Postpositional?
About 48% of Dryer's sample are postpositional;
about 43% are prepositional.

>Are there any natlangs that are neither clearly Prepositional nor
>Postpositional?
About 5% of Dryer's sample have more than one type of adposition with no
dominant type.

>Are there any natlangs in which Prepositions and Postpositions taken together
>don't dominate the adpositions?
About 3% of Dryer's sample have no adpositions;
and about 1% are inpositional.

>Possible example; in Tagalog there seem to be a whole lot of Impositions.
Apparently, the correct word is "inposition" rather than "imposition".
Dryer explains why he calls these infixes "adpositions".
(He also talks about adpositions which can appear both as prepositions and as
postpositions in the same language.  I gather that's one meaning
of "circumposition"; the other meaning appears to be a preposition-
postposition pair which must be used together.)

>In mostly-Prepositional languages that have a few Postpositions (like English's
>postposition "ago"), I have heard that there are a few semantic groups that
>these exceptional Postpositions tend to belong to, even cross-linguistically.
>That is, if a Prepositional language has a few Postpositions, and also has an
>adposition meaning "ago", then chances are that adposition is one of those
>Postpositions.
>
>Does anyone know what those semantic groups are?
This question is still unanswered.
Also, does anyone know where that article or a similar article is?  Or who the
author(s) (probably) is(are)?

>In mostly-Postpositional languages that have a few Prepositions, are there a
>few semantic groups that these exceptional Prepositions tend to belong to,
>even cross-linguistically?
Dryer's article seems to suggest "Yes".  But I may be reading more into it than
is there.  Does anyone know for sure?

>If so are these the same semantic groups as for the opposite situation
>(above)?
>
>If not, what are these semantic groups?
Dryer's article seems to suggest the two groups may not be the same.

If two postpositional languages both have some prepositions, it seems, then
something with the meaning "without" is likely to be one such preposition, IIUC.

But if two prepositional languages both have some postpositions, it seems
something with the meaning "ago" is likely to be one such postposition.

Again, perhaps I am reading into that article more than is there.
Does anyone know for sure?

>In either case, do the semantic groups occur in a hierarchy?
This question is still unanswered.  Some people have told me they guess "yes",
but I don't remember seeing anything about this in any professional paper.

>Are there any semantic groups of adpositions that tend cross-linguistically to
>be Impositions or Circumpositions or Suprapositions or "Transpositions" (if
>there are such things)?
I should revise this question.

Are there any semantic groups of adpositions that tend cross-linguistically to
be Inpositions or Circumpositions?

(As near as I can tell nobody thinks there are suprapositions or transpositions.)

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