Adverbs vs. prepositions

In Ciravesu, some concepts (especially local concepts)
are expressed only by adverbs, not by adpositions. For
example, there's an adverb _or_ meaning _"below", but
there's no postposition for "below, under".

To use a postposition you must first inflect the noun for
postpositional case. But to use adverbs this way you first
establish the existence of the object, and then you use
the adverb in the next proposition. For example:

 _Pano ce or ziece_  "I'm under the sun"
 lit. "Sun be, below I-be"

The "be" part _ce_ is a contraction of
_ece_ "to be", with a very broad meaning
(even broader than in English).

If _or_ were a postposition, the sentence would be
_Panon or ziece_, with -n being one of the marks
of the postpositional case. In some dialects, the
use of _ce_ + adverb is actually becoming a new
kind of postpositional mark, where the adverb
becomes a postposition and is preceded by c-
from _ce_:

 _Pano c'or ziece_

but this is nonstandard.

Is this farfetched? Does any nat- or conlang use such
a scheme? I'd like to get some comments.


--Pablo Flores

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
 Maugham's Thought:
  Only a mediocre person
  is always at his best.
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