postposición

Postpositions are a type of phrasal category in linguistics, similar to prepositions in English. Unlike prepositions, which precede the noun or noun phrase they modify, postpositions follow it. For example, in English we say "in the house," where "in" is a preposition. In a language with postpositions, the equivalent might be something like "house in."

Postpositions are found in a wide variety of languages around the world, particularly in the East Asian languages like Japanese and Korean, as well as in Turkic, Dravidian, and many indigenous languages of the Americas. The presence of postpositions is often correlated with other grammatical features, such as a tendency for word order to be Subject-Object-Verb (SOV).

The grammatical function of postpositions is largely the same as prepositions. They serve to indicate relationships of space, time, direction, manner, or cause between a noun phrase and another element in the sentence. For instance, a postposition might indicate location, movement towards or away from something, possession, or the instrument used to perform an action.

The distinction between prepositions and postpositions is a fundamental classification in the study of syntax and morphology. While English relies heavily on prepositions, many other languages utilize postpositions to convey similar relational meanings. Understanding this difference is crucial for comparative linguistics and for grasping the grammatical structures of diverse languages.