--- In
cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Andy Howey <andyandmae_howey@...> wrote:
> Hello:
>
> I have another question, this time about Modern Indic [...]
> One of the things that I've noticed is that the adposition
> seems to come after the phrase that it governs. Is that unique
> to Gujarati, or is that a feature of most/all modern
> Indo-Aryan languages.
Most [I don't know enough to say all.] I am told that verb final
languages are generally use postpositions. So this is more common that
with just IA.
> Were the earlier stages of Indo-Aryan postposing or preposing,
It depends on what you classify as adpositions. Words that be used to
translate prepositions of, say English, would genrally be postposed.
But in Sanskrit, the ``original adpositions'' are often bound to verbs
even when in English we would translate them by prepositions (rather
than phrasal verbs). But in the older stages, where these are detached
more often, they tend to come after the noun they govern, but can come
anywhere, including the beginning of the poetic foot.
Nath Rao