Re: Set of basic adpositions

Hello,

ROGER MILLS schrieb:
> all others are phrasal with the above, or derivs. from nouns or
> verbs.....
My conlang was inspired by this basically, in that words used as
adpositions often also exist as regular nouns or adjectives/adverbs. The
main preposition (and for some time I considered it the only true one)
is the locative case ending '-ya' (also written '-ea'), which serves as
a basic adposition and often means one of 'at', 'in' or 'on'.

(1) Ang yomaya Mandan sangalya yana.
    AGTFOC exist-3s:m Mandan room-LOC 3s:m.GEN
    'Mandan is in his room.'

The second kind-of adposition is the genitive case marker '-(e)na',
which indicates origin (of, from).

(2) Ang kəsarāy kardangena.
    AGTFOC PST1-go-1s school-GEN
    'I have just come here from school.'

The benefactive case ending '-yam' (to, for) can be considered the third
'true' adposition accordingly.

(3) Ang məilay adanyaley vayam.
    AGTFOC PST2-give-1s that_one-PAT 2.BEN
    'I gave that to you.'

Which status the particle 'manga' has I'm unsure about; it indicates
motion when motion is not already part of the meaning of the verb, and
otherwise as well I guess. The verbs 'saha' (motion towards the speaker)
and 'sara' (motion away from the speaker) are sometimes used in
connection to 'manga' and are usually fused with it. 'Manga' however
nevertheless requires objects to be marked as locatives. So probably
it's a modifier, i. e. an adverb modifying an adposition.

(4) Ang lampiya manga kong nangaya.
    AGTFOC walk-3s:m MOT inside house-LOC
    'He walks into the house.'

Besides, it is also used to indicate an ongoing action.

(5) Manga lampyāng.
    PROGR walk-3s.AGT
    'He is walking.'

As I said, all other adpositions are compounded forms which use nouns or
modifiers as prepositions together with the adpositions mentioned above,
for example:

    agonan - outside
    avan - bottom, ground
    dayrin - side
    kayvo - side (used to mean 'with', 'beside' or 'next to')
    kong - inside
    ling - top
    marin - front, face, surface

'Luga', 'among, between, through' and 'miday', 'around', are exceptions
from this. They probably were coined later when I was a little more
sloppy. And then there are some words that are either adjectives or
postpositions, e.g. 'pesan', 'until', or 'masahatay', 'since' (I don't
know the derivative process behind this anymore).

(6) Lampu mangasaha mehirya kāryo pesan.
    walk-IMP towards tree-LOC big until
    'Walk (until you get) to the big tree.'

In my dictionary there are also two superfluous adpositions, 'eyrarya',
'over', and 'eyran', 'under', but these can be formed as '(manga) ling
...ya' and '(manga) avan ...ya' as well.

Regards
Carsten