Re: terminology: prepositions, postpositions, and...

Mr Veoler wrote:
> Rick Harrison wrote:
>
>>Thanks to Mark and David for the replies. My bad for not searching the list archives. This
>>was briefly discussed in 2004 when Ray Brown said:
>>
>>
>>>In practice it is difficult to see how a 'inposition' is to be
>>>distinguished from an infix.
>>
>>Which is a good point.
>>
>
>
> Well, I imagine an inposition to be inside a noun phrase, maybe between the
> noun and adjective or something... While an infix is inside the noun itself.
Yep - which means, as I pointed out more than once in the recent thread
on the same subject, this means that Classical Latin had inpositions.
But AFAIK no grammar will say so. Instead it merely draws attention to
the usual placement of prepositions in certain phrases or by certain
authors.

As I also wrote in that recent thread, IMO it would only be sensible to
designate a _separate_ category as 'inpositions' if and only if this was
their normal position in all situations.
----------------------------------------

Eldin Raigmore wrote:
[snip]
 > Right, that's also in the thread this year about prepositions in
postpositional
 > languages and postpositions in prepositional languages.

Precisely, which makes it a little surprising virtually the same topic
is being resurrected so soon afterwards.

 > < http://listserv.brown.edu/archives/cgi-bin/wa?
 > A2=ind0709C&L=CONLANG&P=R6956 >
 > and sequelae and prequelae.
 > It mentions a paper by Dryer,
 > <
 >
http://linguistics.buffalo.edu/people/faculty/dryer/dryer/DryerWalsAdpNoMap.pd
 > f >
[snip]

 > Dryer's paper doesn't seem to say how many languages have
inpositions, nor
 > how many they have; but it indicates that, in only a very few
languages, are
 > inpositions the dominant type of adpositions.
 >
 > Any infix wouldn't be counted as an inposition by Dryer; it would
instead be a
 > case-infix for the noun or adjective, by Dryer's terminology.
 >
 > Note Ray (and, I think maybe, others on this list as well?) doubt
that Dryer (or
 > anyone we've heard about) has actually proven the need for a category
 > of "inposition" separate from those of prepositions and postpositions.

yes, Eldin reports me quite correctly. Dryer gives only two examples in
the paper. I expressed doubts about the example from Tümpisa Shoshone,
and Dirk subsequently confirmed my doubts. The example sentence in fact
shows a _postposition_. Nor do I find the example from Amindilyakwa
convincing.

In short, while it is not difficult to find examples of adpositions
being placed in a "inpositive" position on occasions, I am not aware of
any proven case for inposition as a separate category.

The sign I am using in fact dates from that recent thread on this topic  :)

--
Ray
==================================
http://www.carolandray.plus.com
==================================
Entia non sunt multiplicanda
praeter necessitudinem.

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