Edatsal

Edatsal is a linguistic term used to describe a class of expressions that encode adpositional relations, typically realized as a noun or pronoun accompanied by a preposition or postposition. The word is believed to originate from the Turkish word edat, meaning “preposition,” with a suffix forming an adjectival or relational sense. In descriptive grammars of Turkic languages and some related language families, edatsal phrases are analyzed as a distinct syntactic unit that expresses relations such as location, time, means, or accompaniment, and they may function as adjuncts or complements.

Functions and usage commonly include indicating where or when an event occurs, the instrument by which an action is performed, the company of someone, or the source, purpose, or beneficiary of an action. Edatsal phrases can attach to verbs, adjectives, or nouns, and they frequently answer questions like where, when, how, with whom, or by what means. Their exact behavior—such as whether they are restricted to certain syntactic positions or whether they require obligatory particles—varies across languages and grammars.

Structure and morphology depend on the language’s overall system for marking relations. In languages that rely on adpositions (prepositions or postpositions) rather than case endings alone, edatsal phrases may be formed with a dedicated preposition or with a postpositional marker, and they may interact with case or clitic systems. In other languages, the edatsal function can be realized through particles or grammatical markers that accompany a noun phrase.

Cross-linguistically, edatsal is most commonly described in Turkic-language grammars and in descriptions of languages with explicit adpositional systems. It is not universally used as a label, and some grammars instead refer to prepositional phrases or adpositional constructions.