Postposisjoner

Postposisjoner, or postpositions, are a class of adpositions that follow their complement rather than precede it. The complement is usually a noun phrase, pronoun, or noun, and the postposition marks a relation such as location, direction, time, instrument, or manner. In languages with postpositions, the typical order is noun phrase followed by the postposition (NP + postposition).

Many languages rely on postpositions as a primary means of encoding grammatical relations. Notable examples include Japanese and Korean, where particles or suffix-like elements attach to the noun to indicate destination, location, or other relations. Hindi and Tamil are often cited for their postpositional systems as well, where nouns are linked to postpositional elements that express case or relational meaning. In these languages, what in English would be a preposition is realized as a postposition after the noun.

Postpositional marking can express a wide range of functions, including spatial relations (in, on, at, toward), temporal relations (before, after, during), and instrumental or associative relations (with, by). The exact set of postpositions varies by language, and some languages distinguish several types of postpositions with subtle semantic differences.

In contrast to postpositions, prepositions precede their complements, a pattern common in many European languages. Some languages also combine both strategies or use particles and affixes to convey similar relations, showing a continuum between prepositional and postpositional or agglutinative approaches. Overall, postpositions represent a central way languages organize relational meaning directly after the word they govern.