Postpositions modifying nouns

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Bubulus
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Postpositions modifying nouns

Postby Bubulus » 2018-07-12, 17:52

Is anyone here familiar with a language with postpositions such as Hungarian, Estonian, Finnish, Malayalam, Tamil, Arrernte? Does any of these languages allow direct modification of a noun, and if they do, do they appear after the noun?

I'm wondering if there is a language where the following construction is attested, or something very similar to it:

    the book the table on
    'the book on the table'

    the man Germany from
    'the man from Germany'

    a conversation us about
    'a conversation about us'

    the book his life about
    'the book about his life'

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Re: Postpositions modifying nouns

Postby voron » 2018-07-12, 23:46

In Turkish, this type of constructions always take the position before the noun, just like a normal adjective does.

masa-da-ki kitap
table-LOC-ADJ book
'the book on the table'

-ki (marked as ADJ in glossing) is a suffix used to produce an adjectival phrase from a locational expression.

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Re: Postpositions modifying nouns

Postby vijayjohn » 2018-07-13, 3:04

Ser wrote:I'm wondering if there is a language where the following construction is attested, or something very similar to it:

    the book the table on
    'the book on the table'

    the man Germany from
    'the man from Germany'

    a conversation us about
    'a conversation about us'

    the book his life about
    'the book about his life'

Romani.

O lil la sinija-te
the.MASC.NOM book the.FEM.OBL table.OBL-on/at/in

O manuš la Germanija-tar
the.MASC.NOM man the.FEM.OBL Germany.OBL-from

(That's my attempt to translate those first two; not sure how to do the second two, and not sure whether these translations are correct. But I'm fairly certain all these constructions are possible and attested in Romani).

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Re: Postpositions modifying nouns

Postby Vlürch » 2018-07-13, 4:51

Well, in Finnish, nouns are generally declined instead of using postpositions for that kind of stuff:

kirja pöydällä - the/a book on the/a table
kirja pöytä+llä
book table.supe

You could say kirja pöydän päällä ("the book on top of the table"), but at least informally in most contexts that'd sound kinda weird unless it was relevant to clarify that the book was on top of the table rather than somewhere else; you could say pöydän päällä oleva kirja ("the book that is on top of the table"), but again, in most contexts that'd sound pretty formal and could easily make you sound like a foreigner. In writing, of course, that's not nearly as much of an issue.

Also, a sentence like "kirja koiran päällä oli Stephen Kingin 11/22/63" ("the book on top of the dog was Stephen King's 11/22/63" or "the book on the dog's head was Stephen King's 11/22/63") would be perfectly normal (at least grammatically) because using koiralla here could easily be interpreted as the book being held by the dog or even being at the dog's place (if a doghouse is treated as being owned by the dog; it's generally not AFAIK, so the latter wouldn't really make sense).

But with a table, wording it like that in an everyday conversation without sounding at least somewhat stilted would be really context-dependent because tables are inanimate objects and as such can't "have" things, meaning there's no way any native speaker could mix up the identical declensions in that context, so using pöydällä would be simpler and as such preferred. There could be tons of contexts where you could still say pöydän päällä, but in all contexts I can think of, they'd be interchangeable.

Actually, I have no idea what the cases are properly called or what the logic behind them is... supposedly they're only superessive and adessive, but that's probably not true. I'm an idiot, though, so hopefully some other Finn can explain that. All the different cases that are identical make sense intuitively with the differences being obvious, but I couldn't explain them or tell which one is used in some contexts if my life depended on it... :oops:

Anyway, here are the others as well:
mies Saksasta - the/a man from Germany
keskustelu meistä - the/a conversation about us
kirja hänen elämästään - the/a book about his/her life

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Re: Postpositions modifying nouns

Postby voron » 2018-07-13, 9:45

vijayjohn wrote:Romani.

Ah, now that you mentioned Romani,

Kurmanji and Zazaki behave similarly. In standard Kurmanji there are no postpositions (only prepositions and circumpositions), but in Kurmanji dialects and in Zazaki there are, and the constructions above are translated similar to your Romani examples.

Kurmanji (dialect):
the man in the house
zilam ê malê da
man.NOM EXT house.OBL in

'ê' is called a 'construct extender', and it is used to combine a noun phrase with an adjectival phrase.

The feature of the language that leads to this type of constructions is that it consistently places adjectives and adjectival phrases after nouns:

the tall man
zilamê direj
man.CONST tall

Ciarán12

Re: Postpositions modifying nouns

Postby Ciarán12 » 2018-07-13, 10:21

In Japanese, the relative clauses come before the noun:

tēburu ni aru hon
table on is book - a/the book which is on a/the table

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Re: Postpositions modifying nouns

Postby Lur » 2018-07-13, 11:30

like Basque!
Geurea dena lapurtzen uzteagatik, geure izaerari uko egiteagatik.

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Re: Postpositions modifying nouns

Postby Multiturquoise » 2018-07-13, 12:07

Georgian does the same too.

a book on the table
წიგნი მაგიდაზე*
book table-on

a man from Germany
კაცი გერმანიიდან**
man Germany-from

a conversation about us
საუბარი ჩვენს*** შესახებ
conversation we(gen) about

a book about his life
წიგნი მისი ცხოვრების**** შესახებ
book his life-gen about

* მაგიდა 'table' + -ზე 'on'
** გერმანია 'Germany' + -დან 'from'
*** ჩვენ 'we' + -ის 'of'
**** ცხოვრება 'life' + -ის 'of'
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Re: Postpositions modifying nouns

Postby vijayjohn » 2018-07-13, 12:20

To be clear, sinijate and Germanijatar are written as single words in Romani, too, despite both arguably having postpositions at the end (they require the nouns they attach to to be marked for oblique case first).
voron wrote:Kurmanji and Zazaki behave similarly.

Probably a ton of (maybe even most?) other Iranian languages do the same, too. It would also be kind of weird if Sorani didn't do the same. :P

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Re: Postpositions modifying nouns

Postby Bubulus » 2018-07-13, 15:36

Thank you guys for your answers!
Multiturquoise wrote:* მაგიდა + -ზე
** გერმანია + -დან
*** ჩვენ + -ის
**** ცხოვრება + -ის

What does this mean? I know zero Georgian.

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Re: Postpositions modifying nouns

Postby vijayjohn » 2018-07-14, 3:13

I know almost zero Georgian also, but I think comparing the letters in the footnotes to the original sentence makes it pretty clear. :)

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Re: Postpositions modifying nouns

Postby JackFrost » 2018-07-14, 16:54

Vlürch wrote:Well, in Finnish, nouns are generally declined instead of using postpositions for that kind of stuff:

Well, Ser's asking if postpositions, when they're really used, modify the nouns, which is unsurprisingly the case in Finnish. Usually, the noun would be in the genitive if a postposition is used. Ex.: planeetan ympäri planet-GEN around "around the planet". Yet, other cases could be used. Like the partitive, ex.: kävelin autoa ympäri [I] walked car-PART around "I [repetitively] walked around the car" (like looking for any damage if you might have hit something).

Of course you already know this, but I'm just explaining it to Ser. Please do correct me if I'm off. :P

Do nouns take other cases other than the genitive and partitive when followed by a postposition?
Neferuj paħujkij!

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Re: Postpositions modifying nouns

Postby Vlürch » 2018-07-19, 14:30

JackFrost wrote:Like the partitive, ex.: kävelin autoa ympäri [I] walked car-PART around "I [repetitively] walked around the car" (like looking for any damage if you might have hit something).

This sounds kinda off to me, but it could just be me sucking at braining. I mean, I guess it's technically correct, but if I heard it, I'd think it meant "I walked all over the inside of the car"; kiertelin autoa ("I circled around the car") sounds way more natural. If you only walked around it once, then you could say kävelin/kiersin auton ympäri, with the former verb being more suitable because using kiertää here could lead to ambiguity since it could also mean "I rolled the car around until it was in a spiral shape" or something like that, which of course wouldn't be the logical interpretation, but... :lol: Also, just kiersin auton to mean "I walked around the car once" would be fine.

What you couldn't say is kävelytin autoa ympäriinsä unless you meant "I walked the car all over the place", as in walking it like a dog. :P
JackFrost wrote:Do nouns take other cases other than the genitive and partitive when followed by a postposition?

The line between postpositions and adverbs is kinda blurry (at least in my head) because they function pretty much the same way in Finnish (well, very similarly), but yeah:

talosta vasemmalle - left of the house (elative)
talolta poispäin - away from the house (ablative)
talolle asti - to the house (allative)
etc.

For example,

Käänny risteyksestä vasemmalle ja juokse koko matka talolle asti. ("Turn left from the junction and run all the way to the house.")

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Re: Postpositions modifying nouns

Postby Linguaphile » 2018-07-28, 2:40

Just found this post so I don't know if Ser is still interested in more examples, or maybe I'm too late, but in Estonian it works the way the original post describes. Postpositions follow the noun and the noun is in genitive form. I'm including here a translation that works that way for each phrase that Ser posted, as well as an alternative way of saying each with case endings rather than postpositions. Both versions can be used. (Note that in the case of the "man from Germany" phrase, pärit is an adverb, not a postposition; it can be glossed here as "native of," "by origin," "by birth" or "originally from". Because it is not a postposition it requires the noun which it modifies to take a locative case, in this case ablative, rather than genitive case. In contrast, with locative postpositions, it is the postposition itself that takes a locative case and the noun is in the genitive.)

the book the table on

raamat laua peal book.NOM table.GEN head.ADE [head.ADE is a fixed expression which translates as "on"]
raamat laual book.NOM table.ADE

the man Germany from

Saksamaalt pärit mees Germany.ABL by.origin man.NOM
mees Saksamaalt man.NOM Germany.ABL

a conversation us about

vestlus meie kohta conversation.NOM us.GEN about
vestlus meist conversation.NOM us.ELA

the book his life about

raamat tema elu kohta book.NOM 3S.GEN life.GEN about
raamat tema elust book.NOM 3S.GEN life.ELA


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