Adpositional Phrase - Postpositional Phrases

Postpositional Phrases

Postpositions are usually found in head-final languages such as Basque, Estonian, Finnish, Georgian, Korean, Japanese, Hindi, Urdu, Bengali and Tamil. The word or other morpheme that corresponds to an English preposition occurs after its complement, hence the name postposition. The following examples are from Japanese:

• mise ni ("to the store")
• ie kara ("from the house")
• hashi de ("with chopsticks" or "on the bridge")

And from Finnish, where postpositions have further developed into case endings:

• kauppaan ("to the store")
• talosta ("from the house")
• puikoilla ("with chopsticks")

Postpositional phrases generally act as complements and adjuncts of noun phrases and verb phrases.