Postposition
A postposition is a grammatical particle that expresses some sort of relationship between the preceding noun or pronoun (its object) and another part of the sentence; a postpositional phrase functions as an adjective or adverb. Postpositions are the equivalents of prepositions in languages where the object precedes the particle, such as Japanese. Here are some examples:
- Finnish: talon edessä (literally, "house in front of"; naturally, "in front of the house"), talon takana ("house behind of")
- Hungarian: kutya nélkül ("dog without")
- Japanese: doko ni ("where at"), doko e ("where to")
- Korean: Hanguk e ("Korea to")
- Hindi: Kamra mẽ ("Room in")
- German: dir gegenüber ("you opposite"); ihr zuliebe ("her sake for"), ihm zufolge ("him according to")
English has one postposition: "ago"; however, English also has a tendency to form postpositional compound words, such as "thereafter" and "wherein", a quality likely borrowed from Latin, a fellow prepositional language. Some English speakers also tend to use prepositions postpositionally when their objects are interrogative pronouns, such as in "Where to?" or "What for?".
There is a tendency for languages to be postpositional when in the unmarked sentences the object of the verb precedes the verb (especially the very common SOV order). However, this is only a tendency (Latin itself is typically SOV).
