Re: Origin of prepositions/postpositions

Benct Philip Jonsson wrote at 2005-12-18 21:55:55 (+0100)

 > I'd like some input on how prepositions/postpositions may arise in
 > a language.  The scenario is essentially a language that has had
 > cases but lost them through regular sound change.  I'm aware that
 > adpositions may arise from nouns, adverbs or verbs, but am a little
 > hazy on how the latter in particular works.

There's some information on the development of adpositions through
grammaticalization of nouns, verbs &c. in this paper by Scott DeLancey:
http://www.uoregon.edu/~delancey/papers/glt.html

The following passage gives a suggestive example in the case of verbs.

| Grammaticalization theory provides an answer--they behave similarly
| because many adpositions were once verbs.  Consider the status of
| the coverb ?aw 'take, take up, pick up' in Thai; a situation with
| parallels in other Southeast Asian and West African languages.  This
| functions as an instrumental marker in sentences like:
|
|           ?aw  takiab    kin kwaytiaw
|           take chopstick eat noodles
|           '[] eat noodles with chopsticks'
|
| Such a sentence is exactly parallel syntactically to a clause chain
| referring to a sequence of events, such as:
|
|           ?aw  nangsyy paj rongrian
|           take book    go  school
|           '[] pick up []'s books and go to school'


 > Also I'm aware that some languages get along with basically three
 > prepositions ("to, from, in"), e.g. French.

If you want to investigate languages with few adpositions, look at
Mayan.  Many Mayan languages get by with only a single true
preposition.