Re: Set of basic adpositions

I went through a very similar process, but with cases instead of
adpositions, in what became Okaikiar.  I started with one case to use
for the answer to each of the basic journalism questions: who
(nominative), what (accusative), why (dative), where (locative), when
(temporal), how (instrumental).  It quickly ballooned to include
whence (ablative), whither (allative), and temporal versions of both
of those, while the "when" case was reduced to the temporal locative.
Right about when I started to split off "wherefore" into its own case
instead of being lumped in with "why", I decided I was maybe getting
carried away.
  Then I merged the 3 "where" cases with the 3 "when" ones, but added
the idea that all nouns, regardless of case, had both spatial and
temporal aspects, and a separate marker would let you specify which
was intended in case of undesired ambiguity.



On 11/14/08, R A Brown <ray@...> wrote:
> Benct Philip Jonsson wrote:
>> R A Brown skrev:
>>> Hi all!
>>>
>>> On page 87 of "Describing Morphosyntax", Thomas Payne wrote: "The set
>>> of basic adpositions in most languages is rather small, consisting of
>>> perhaps five or six forms."
> [snip]
>>
>> I don't know about adpositions, but a common
>> small system of local cases is
>>
>> * Locative   = 'X is at Y',
>> * Lative     = 'X moves to(wards) Y',
>> * Separative = 'X moves (away) from Y',
>
> Sort of like Malay/Indonesian prepositions _di_, _ka/ke_ and _dari_
> respectively.
>
> Of course adpositions do express other relations besides local ones. I
> had thought of using three adpositions, like the above, where they would
> also double up for temporal relations 'time when', 'time until' & 'time
> since' respectively.
>
> [snip]
>> The only really freaquent further simplification,
>> short of languages with only one case covering all
>> oblique functions is to have a single (set of) form(s)
>> covering the functions of both locative and lative.
>
> Like the Romancelangs & modern Greek. How common is this in non-IE
> languages? Also, do we find a similar use of a single form for both
> 'time when' and 'time until'?
>
>> There may be freak languages which merge lative
>> and separative or even locative and separative,
>> but I can't imagine the latter in particular
>> being a very useful distinction and hence to be
>> stable.
>
> Nor I - but examples of all three being expressed by the same adposition
> are know, cf., Tok Pisin _blong_ and Tzotzil _ta_.
>
> Then there are other relationships to consider, such as 'with' (both
> associative & instrumental).
>
> At the moment I'm considering a small set similar to modern Greek's
> _se_, _apo_, _me_ and _gia_ - tho I'm still undecided instead of _se_ I
> should two adpositions, one for locative & the other for (al-/il-)lative.
>
> --
> Ray
> ==================================
> http://www.carolandray.plus.com
> ==================================
> Frustra fit per plura quod potest
> fieri per pauciora.
> [William of Ockham]
>
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Mark J. Reed <markjreed@...>

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