Meaning of Adposition | Babel Free

Definitions

An element that combines syntactically with a phrase and indicates how that phrase should be interpreted in the surrounding context; a preposition or postposition.

Equivalents

Examples

“Throughout this book, I have⟳ assumed that adpositions (prepositions and postpositions) are not lexical categories, but rather functional categories.[…]While this view⟳ of adpositions is far from unprecedented, it runs contrary to the more standard generative treatment, championed by Jackendoff (1977: 31-33), in which adpositions constitute a fourth lexical category, filling out the logical space of possibilities defined by the two binary-valued features #43;#92;#33;#47;#92;#33;#92;#33;-#92;#33;#92;#33;#92;mathsfN and #43;#92;#33;#47;#92;#33;#92;#33;-#92;#33;#92;#33;#92;mathsfV.”

“2008, Amani Bohoussou, Stavros Skopeteas, Grammaticalization of spatial adpositions in Nànáfwê, Elisabeth Verhoeven, Stavros Skopeteas, Yong-Min Shin, Yoko Nishina, Johannes Helmbrecht (editors), Studies on Grammaticalization, Walter de Gruyter (Mouton), page 77, It is well known in West African linguistics that languages in this broad sense⟳ display adpositions that emerge⟳ out of these two sources, namely nouns and verbs.”

“By establishing adpositions as a constantly referred to but never really demonstrated language category, this book has provided a basis for the theory of the linguistic category.[…]Adpositions could be considered a clear-cut category if one relied on syntax only, for one simple reason⟳: the are specialized in function-marking.”

CEFR level