Re: Set of basic adpositions

David J. Peterson wrote:
> Tok Pisin has two: bilong (genitive), and long (all else).
My conlang, Bowtudgelean, is quite heavy in prepositions, because I've
decided that they can carry the force of an action.

For instance, za is a preposition indicating that someone is handling
something, and pu is the presposition indicating the thing being
handled.  They are kind of like specialized case markers.  A verb isn't
necessary unless you want to be specific about the type of handling.
(It's arguable that the verbs are actually adverbs, and the prepositions
verbs, but never mind that.)  Anyway, you might have sentences like these:


Za stizan pu owxkæn. => The man handled (i.e., pressed) the button.
Za stizan pu xkin. => The man handled (i.e., played with) the toy.
Gaðrepiga za stizan pu xkin. => The man threw the toy.
Za stizan pu stizan. =>


Anyway, there are maybe a dozen generic actions (manipulation, motion,
transfer, etc.) that have their own set of prepositions, so there's got
to be lots.


> Even languages like French and Spanish, though, started out
> with just the three (a, de, and en), adding others as the language
> was fleshed out (often in combination with the original three).
Unless I'm misunderstanding something, Spanish has at least five more
basic prepositions besides a, de, and en:

con, por, para, sur, sobre

And even some of the derived prepositions (such as entre) Spanish
"started out" with; entre descends directly from Latin inter.  Speaking
of Latin, I can think of 13 basic prepositions off hand:

ad, ab, ex, de, in, ob, sub, super, ante, post, pro, per, cum

I suspect IE languages in general might tend to be heavy in adpositions,
and maybe English has a lot for an IE language but Latin seems no slouch.


Carl Banks

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