Re: Set of basic adpositions

Paul Bennett wrote:
> AFMCL, I've been playing thought-experiments with Terzemian lately,
> and it seems there are three basic postpositions, simply "to", "at",
> and "from".
That, at one point, had occurred to me also. Then I remembered that in
the Romance languages & modern Greek the "to" & "at" meanings have
fallen together, e.g. both French _à_ and Greek _se_ = "in, into, to,
on, at"

Indeed - I shouldn't have remembered that modern Greek has only a small
set of basic prepositions; by far the most common are:
s(e) = in, into, to, on, at
ap(o) = from, off, out of

The two next most common are:
m(e) = with, by
gia /ja/ = for, about

There are IIRC six others, but I would not class them as 'basic'; also
I'm fairly certain that some (all?) of them are literary and not much
used in the spoken language:
katá = toward(s), according to
pros = towards
antí(s) = instead of
os = up to, until
xorís = without   [x = /x/ 'chi']
díxos = without

Otherwise the language uses compounds, mostly adverb+s(e) or
adverb+ap(o), but there are also compounds of adverb+m(e) and adverb+gia.

 From which I think it reasonable to say modern Greek has only four
basic prepositions: se, apo, me & gia.

> I'm kinda having trouble though, because there are what feel like a
> whole suite of secondary adpositions (that physically nuzzle between
> the noun and the postposition proper), forming an
> agglutinative/analytical grid of 18 "metapostpositions", of which
> perhaps 10 or 12 appear to be meaningful. Languages being what they
> are, the "rows" of the table (where the columns are "to", "at" and
> "from") are not entirely regular, and therefore the surface forms are
> not entirely regular either.
I've played with similar grids, tho not for Piashi - just for fun  ;)

In fact a small grid on these lines does appear in my description of TAKE:
http://carolandray.plus.com/Prepositions.html#motion

[snip]
>
> So, to answer Ray's original question, Terzemian has three, 18,
> 10-ish, or maybe 6.
  Er - thanks (I think ;)

> FWIW, there's Natlang relevance, as Georgian was
> much on my mind when building the system, as (unfortunately?) was
> Turkish.
Rather different languages - perhaps that's the case of the muddle  :)

> For those who don't have my complete conlanging history in
> their heads, the system ultimately derives from the (phonetically
> regular but semantically a bit haphazard) 3-dimensional grid that was
> in Wenetaic
_three_ dimensional, WOW! All mine have been just plain ol' 2-D things.

> (which partly begat the second version of Thagojian, which
> begat Terzemian).
>
> And, if you're anything like as confused as I am now, I'll just say
> "Glad to be of service" ;-)
Well, it jogged my memory to recall modern Greek! And the notion of a
3-D 'adpositional grid' has got me thinking - not for Piashi, but maybe
some other conlang ;)

--
Ray
==================================
http://www.carolandray.plus.com
==================================
Frustra fit per plura quod potest
fieri per pauciora.
[William of Ockham]

Replies