Our website is made possible by displaying online advertisements to our visitors.
Please consider supporting us by disabling your ad blocker.

Responsive image


Adpositional phrase

An adpositional phrase is a syntactic category that includes prepositional phrases, postpositional phrases, and circumpositional phrases.[1] Adpositional phrases contain an adposition (preposition, postposition, or circumposition) as head and usually a complement such as a noun phrase. Language syntax treats adpositional phrases as units that act as arguments or adjuncts. Prepositional and postpositional phrases differ by the order of the words used. Languages that are primarily head-initial such as English predominantly use prepositional phrases whereas head-final languages predominantly employ postpositional phrases. Many languages have both types, as well as circumpositional phrases.

  1. ^ Adpositional phrases are discussed by, for instance, Stockwell (1977:60ff.), Lockwood (2002:54f.), and Tallerman (2005:48f.).

Previous Page Next Page