[tied] Re: Origin of prepositions

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Piotr Gasiorowski
<piotr.gasiorowski@...> wrote:

> 15-08-03 08:11, aquila_grande wrote:
>
> > The preposition "in" was at some time a locative? case form of a
> > noun/ajective as far as I know that denoted "inside". You still

find

> > this stem used both as a noun/adjective and adverb in many

languages.

>
> A particularly clear case is *h2anti 'against, opposite, facing'

(e.g.

> Gk. anti, Lat. ante, PGmc. *andi/*anda), the locative of *h2ant-
> 'forehead, front, face', cf. Hitt. hant- 'front, forehead' (Eng.

end [<

> PGmc. *andija-] is also related).
>

Read your nearest grammar for prepositions taking the genitive. Many
are old nouns or prepositional clauses. Cf. Engl. 'till' (< Norse)
vs. German 'Ziel' "goal".

I wonder myself whether two prepositions English of/over; Latin
sub/super; Greek hupo/huper isn't related to something in

http://www.angelfire.com/rant/tgpedersen/Opr.html

"in, on the river"?, "across the river"?. Very obviously it's just a
hunch. If the s- is somehow related to the Semitic causative prefix,
those prepositions must be old verbal forms.

Torsten