adpositional

Adpositional is an adjective used in linguistics to describe anything related to adpositions, a broad class of words that expresses a relationship between a noun (or pronoun) and another element in a sentence. Adpositions include prepositions (which come before their complement), postpositions (which follow their complement), and circumpositions (a combination of two parts surrounding the complement). The term adpositional is often preferred in typology and grammar to cover all these possibilities.

An adpositional phrase is a unit headed by an adposition and its complement. It can function as a modifier, an argument, or part of a larger structure, providing information about location, time, direction, manner, cause, and other relations. For example, in English the phrase in the park is an adpositional phrase where the preposition in marks the relationship between the noun park and the rest of the clause.

Languages vary in how adpositions are realized. Some use separate words (prepositions like in, on, at in English), others rely on affixes or case endings to encode similar relations (as in many languages with postpositional or suffixal adpositions). Some languages employ circumpositions, which combine a prefix and a suffix with the noun to encase the complement. The study of adpositional systems touches on syntax, morphology, and typology, highlighting how different languages package relational meaning.

See also: preposition, postposition, circumposition, adposition.