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What is a post-position?
Tuesday 3 January 2012
I am sure that in one of the many times you have discussed grammar and language you have heard about, or even better, you actually know what a preposition is. They are words like above, behind, between, under, in, or on, and they are used to describe how things are in space or time. But have you ever heard of a postposition?
I have recently discovered that Japanese (but not only Japanese) doesn't have prepositions to do this grammatical job, but it has postpositions. And I think that is cool, both the word and the difference with English.
More interestingly, the only english postposition I have been able to find is the word 'ago'.
Does anyone know of any others?
3 comments :
Perhaps I should add, although it may already be obvious, that a preposition comes before the word it is modifying while a postposition comes after.
Hence why you shouldn't end a sentence with a preposition ;-)
I found a list of postpositions in English on the wiki prepositions in English page.
The list:
ago
apart
aside
away
hence
notwithstanding
on
through
withal
The majority can be used prepositionally. I noticed the postpositional way to use them seems a bit more 'oldschool' (which I like).
That's interesting that these postpositions can be used prepositionally. Thanks for the list though.
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