Talk:Adposition

message: Given what is said below - please dumb this down - I thought this page was excellent. If you want to know what a preposition is, use a dictionary. If you are an English only speaker, then you shouldnt be accessing a linguistics page. I thought the profusion of examples very useful. well done whoever wrote the articles  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.153.31.182 (talk) 23:21, 23 January 2014 (UTC)
thread_title: please simplify

message: What Churchill actually said was, "This is the sort of bloody nonsense up with which I will not put."
He had written a piece in which he ended a sentence with a preposition.  A very foolish editor changed it to be grammatically correct, thereby rendering Churchill's words in non-Churchill form.
One did not change Winston Churchill's sentences - at least not more than once (and even then, you might not have lived to tell the tale).
Anyway, that bit of the article should be corrected since it completely misquotes Churchill, and what it says has nothing to do with what he was saying.
69.181.62.103 (talk) 04:45, 14 January 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: For the benefit of anyone idly skimreading this talk page: No it is not what Churchill actually said: please see Benjamin Zimmer, "Churchill vs editorial nonsense", Language Log, 27 November 2005. And even if he had said it, it would be pretty silly: please see Geoffrey K. Pullum, "A Churchill story up with which I will no longer put", Language Log, 8 December 2004. -- Hoary (talk) 13:19, 23 October 2018 (UTC)
thread_title: Winston Churchill Story

message: If you wish to participate in older discussions, please copy and paste the thread here.
*Older discussions moved from talk:postposition (March 5 2003 - October 15 2005)
*Older discussions moved from talk:preposition (May 30 2003 - December 1 2005)
I made the merger of postposition and preposition. I removed duplicate information and the very drawn-out and to me misplaced discussion about normative usage of English, including quotes from Churchill and Bishop. I don't feel that this very specific English prescriptivist material is relevant in an encyclopedic  article about a general feature of grammar in any language.
Peter  Isotalo 05:16, 27 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Archives 

message: This preposition page is all FAKE. Only 3 or 4 on this list are actually prepositions. I was doing this in school, and looking at this page because I forgot my book and I got every single one wrong thanks to you bozos.
JM 2010  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.102.198.22 (talk) 12:13, 22 September 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  "all FAKE" 

message: Just a minor point but it seems confusing that in the first section with multiple examples of prepositions, the bold typeface implies that those words are the prepositions when in fact they are not. Do you think this could be changed, perhaps putting the prepositions themselves in bold type.
ThomDoughty (talk) 10:55, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Formatting Issue

message: I am working on a substantial overhaul of this article, which at the moment contains some inaccuracies. Before I totally hijack the page, the current draft is visible in my userspace. CapnPrep 20:54, 17 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Rewrite 

message: It's not at all obvious to me that this article is in need of cleanup, so please explain here why you feel that it is. —RuakhTALK 15:50, 26 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Why the cleanup tag? 

message: Adpositions are non-inflecting (or "invariant"); i.e., they do not have paradigms of forms (for different tenses, cases, genders, etc.) in the same way as verbs, adjectives, and nouns in the same language.
:: a reference somewhere to the Celtic languages by someone more knowledgeable than me would be helpful... --Explendido Rocha 09:02, 12 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Yeah, it's also not completely true for the Semitic languages such as Hebrew, where personal pronouns are not used with prepositions; instead, the prepositions are inflected for gender, person, and number. (N.B. The prepositions don't agree with their objects; if their object is a normal noun or pronoun, then they just attach to it. Rather, it's only that if their object is a personal pronoun, then they inflect to contain it.) —RuakhTALK 15:35, 12 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Celtic 

message: As I understand it, the cleanup banner applies to articles with bad grammar, spelling, punctuation and/or organisation -- basically articles that are sloppily written. This article certainly is not sloppily written, so the banner is not warranted and I have removed it. From the comments above, it seems that the main complaint may be that the article is too technical and is inaccessible to the non-expert. In that case the  banner might be more appropriate. Matt 20:07, 12 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Removal of cleanup banner 

message: I chanced upon the article, and liked it a lot.  It seems to me to contain a great deal of useful information.  I gather, however, that some people find it "hard".
I would like to suggest moving the article to Preposition, by far the most common word for these beasties, and beginning something like this (slow onramp to the tougher bits):
A preposition is a part of speech that introduces a dependent clause.  For example, in the sentence "I sleep until the alarm goes off.", "I" is the subject, "sleep" is the verb, and "until" is a preposition, introducing the dependent clause "until the alarm goes off".  Common examples of prepositions include "by", "for", and "to".
Linguists sometimes distinguish between a "preposition", which preceeds a dependent clause, a "postposition", which follows a dependent clause, and as a rare case a "circumposition", which surrounds a dependent clause.  Taken together, these three parts of speech are called "adpositions".
Rick Norwood 15:03, 10 October 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: In my case, my silence implies that I really don't know whether that's a good idea; I can't decide. And no, to is a preposition, even in your example sentence; however, it's a stranded preposition. —RuakhTALK 14:38, 11 October 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Hearing no objections, I'm going to make the changes discussed above. Rick Norwood 17:24, 18 October 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  preposition? 

message: The "-on" in the Hungarian word "asztalon", given as an example of a postposition, is a case suffix rather than a postposition (cf. the Finnish and Turkish examples under the heading "Case affixes" later in the article). I would have used "az asztal  alatt" instead, but "under the table" wouldn't fit with the other examples, so I have deleted the Hungarian reference. Pecsorin 11:14, 16 October 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Postposition examples 

message: I just came to this page for the first time, and find that the move to Adposition seems extremely ill-advised, especially as it was a cut-and-paste of existing articles. But instead of moving this article back to Preposition, perhaps we should start a new article there that avoids the faults of this one. My only hesitation is that this would divorce the page from its edit history, which is generally considered a fault in Wikipedia. Comments? Penetrating wisdom? -- Rob C. alias Alarob 14:30, 22 October 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Wikipedia should not argue with itself, and so I think this part of speech should have one article.  I would like that article to be called "preposition" but can't do that without the help of an administrator, and none has come forward.  So, I'm going to follow the suggestion above, and move it to "preposition and postposition".  Maybe at some later date it can be changed to "preposition". Rick Norwood 21:34, 22 October 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: No one came forward because its five days on RM hadn't finished. Since "preposition" is an inaccurate title for the merged articles, I don't plan to move it further. I suppose the compromise is the current title. Dekimasuよ! 05:49, 23 October 2007 (UTC)

text: I completely missed the listing on WP:RM, but given the history of the pages involved, I'm surprised this was handled as an uncontroversial move. I don't see evidence of any consensus in the ensuing discussion, either. And now the page has been moved, but not in accordance with the original proposal! This is strange. CapnPrep 16:18, 23 October 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: And so, now, thirteen years later, it is still strange. It may be that the person who insisted on the inclusion of the arcane "postpostion" (which the Wikipedia spellchecker does not even recognize as a word) has lost interest. If so, maybe we can now change the name of the article back to "Preposition". Rick Norwood (talk) 21:09, 30 January 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Move back to [[Preposition]]? 

message: According to my understanding, until would be a preposition in the sentence:  I wasn't feeling sick until after dessert. Should we add modifying a prepositional phrase to the list of uses for English prepositions? Or am I not parsing that correctly?Joshuajohanson 18:59, 25 October 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: That section is poorly written, but to put your example in its terms, "until after dessert" is modifying "wasn't feeling sick", so falls into the "modifying verbs" category. The "Classification by complement" section explains that prepositions can take prepositional phrases as complements. —RuakhTALK 19:42, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

text: O.K., I've rewritten that section to be more clear about what it's trying to say; what do you think? —RuakhTALK 20:15, 25 October 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Prepositions modifying another prepositional phrase 

message: The cat ran _on_ the tree.
Any thing that fits the blank is a preposition  —Preceding unsigned comment added by Abaac (talk • contribs) 15:00, 8 November 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: So "of" is not a preposition? —RuakhTALK 18:18, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

text: Yes indeed, anything that fits the blank in The cat ran __at__ the tree. is a preposition (assuming the blank stands for a single word). This helps us generate prepositions but does nothing much to limit them. It also says nothing about of. (Logic 101!) So how about of? It too is a preposition, though in some analyses it's instead a case marker in many instances. -- Hoary (talk) 10:43, 2 April 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Easy identification for prepositions

message: I'm sure out is a preposition, but I don't see it anywhere listed as an example. Not being a native English speaker, I don't know where to list it. Also, it might be a good idea to touch the subject of 'composite' preposition (as I call them), like 'from out of' (the rain).  — Edokter • Talk •  01:50, 6 March 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Out is in the List of English prepositions. And there is an example "from under the bed" in the Preposition and postposition#Classification by complement section. CapnPrep (talk) 10:38, 6 March 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  "Out" 

message: I've removed the following from the first paragraph:
:It is considered poor form in strict English to end a sentence with a preposition.
It's specifically about English, whereas the article is not. It's about a minor aspect of preposition stranding, which itself is rather unusual (common in English but not in many languages). It's more specifically about something called "strict English", a concept that's new to me. I presume that this means "formal English" or similar. All sorts of things are considered "poor form" about English, formal or otherwise, by this or that group of people: various self-appointed language experts derive livelihoods from propagating such shibboleths, but we don't have to take the Strunks and Whites of the world seriously in what is not an etiquette manual but an encyclopedia. This particular "rule" has a history of 336 years (see the Cambridge Grammar of the English Language, p.627, fn 11) but it's not part of the language. Arguably it nevertheless deserves a mention, but not in the first paragraph of an article about adpositions in general. (Popular misconceptions about English grammar, anyone?) -- Hoary (talk) 10:36, 2 April 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: For the record, this is discussed in the Stranding section, Preposition stranding, Disputes in English grammar, and Hypercorrection. – kentyman (talk) 16:35, 10 May 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  "strict English" and its etiquette 

message: Just curious, what is this article about?  I was redirected from adposition, and yet the first part seems to be about prepositions, and then I go further, and all the information is about adpositions!  I don't know why all this information is merged.  Can we please have a page on Prepositions, one on Postpositions, and one on Adpositions?  It seems that the 'everything on one page' technique has not done well for any of us.  I just want more in depth language about a specific linguistic term, and so it is not necessary to tell me what a preposition is.  And yet it seems people are getting directed to this page, hoping for that... and yet they don't come away satisfied either.  Can't we just keep things straight forward?  Preposition info on Preposition page... Adposition info on Adposition page?  Thanks...  134.93.59.195 (talk) 01:04, 13 January 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Confusing as can be...

message: This article looks very much like a more formal article on adpositions has simply been tacked onto the end of a less formal article on prepositions without any attempt to integrate them. As an introduction, the part before the contents goes beyond the brief introduction required with multiple examples and asides about Churchill. The part after the contents is written as if the subject of the article is adpositions. The Definition defines adposition but neither preposition or postposition which are the supposed topics of the article.
HisRuntyDogma (talk) 15:03, 12 August 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Structure 

message: Or at least a similar idea. Postpositions, in common Korean, are referred to as 조사 and as 후치사, I believe, in linguistics terms?
Anyway, here is the page.
http://ko.wikipedia.org/wiki/%EC%A1%B0%EC%82%AC_%28%ED%92%88%EC%82%AC%29
96.38.57.17 (talk) 08:14, 21 February 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Korean language page seemed lost, so I found it 

message: French prepositions for countries depend on their grammatical gender, for example en France (la France, f), but au Canada (le Canada, m). Should this be mentioned in the article next to the Inflected prepositions? Bead-v (talk) 12:03, 11 June 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  French prepositions for countries 

message: The fact that the page is unreadable may be the least of its issues: it may soon become irrelevant as people increasingly substitute the word "to" for other prepositions.1canuckbuck (talk) 20:03, 17 August 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  is "to" the new universal preposition? 

message: all wikis, except of three have two different articles. Is it better to split into two articles? Interwiki will work much better. --Olga@ 23:08, 28 August 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[Preposition]] and [[postposition]] 

message: Is it too soon to note the recent shift in American English to the use of "because" as a preposition? Kendall-K1 (talk) 14:41, 12 December 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Because 

message: What on earth has gone on here? A couple of weeks ago there was a perfectly sensible arrangement with one article with the accessible title Preposition and postposition. Now we unnecessarily have three different articles (and not very good ones) on what is effectively the same thing. Can it go back to how it was? W. P. Uzer (talk) 22:14, 25 December 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: I moved this page back to its long-standing title. I plan to redirect the other two titles back to here too. If someone disagrees, please discuss. I see no need to have separate pages on three terms that represent almost the same concept; and I think the title of the combined page should certainly include (or simply be) the vastly most recognizable term "preposition". W. P. Uzer (talk) 19:35, 28 December 2014 (UTC)
replies: text:  Every other Wikipedia language has the article called "adposition" (wikidata:Q134316), which is the technical term. "Preposition and postposition" was some arbitrary decision made by a single user a long time ago, before English Wikipedia had the good coverage of linguistics topics that it does now. This title leaves out "circumposition" for no justifiable reason. In addition, many Wikipedia languages have separate articles on each type of adposition. They are sufficiently distinct as to be able maintain separate articles, given the appropriate love. I strongly suggest that this page be moved back to adposition. —Gordon P. Hemsley→✉ 13:05, 29 December 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: I really don't see any reason to have separate articles - almost everything we say about one type of adposition will apply to all of the others, modulo changes in word order. We will just be duplicating effort and making things more confusing for readers who would like to read about the topic as a whole. As to the title of the combined article, my impression is that "adposition" is a little-known technical term, whereas "preposition" (and to a lesser extent "postposition") is well-known across a broad population of readers. We aim to have recognizable titles - any title that excludes the word "preposition" is automatically going to lose most of the available recognizability. Circumpositions are a marginal curiosity that needn't be worried too much about (and in any case can be argued to be covered by the current title). I'd be happy to call the page simply "Preposition"; the article already states that some linguists use that term to cover all types of adposition. W. P. Uzer (talk) 09:59, 30 December 2014 (UTC)
thread_title: Split or merge, and title of article

message: The article currently contains the following text:
"As a predicative expression (complement of a copula)
    The key is under the stone.
    The cricketer was given out leg before wicket."
I fail to see that "was" in the second example is a copula; to me it looks like an auxiliary. Any comments?Redav (talk) 14:53, 25 March 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Word indicated as copula does not seem to be a copula 

message: The two titles of Wikipedia articles that I find most cringe-worthy. Can nothing be done? Rick Norwood (talk) 15:39, 15 April 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Preposition and Postposition and Mass Murders by Communist Regimes 

message: The following Wikimedia Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion:
* English-English dictionaries and thesaurus books.JPG
Participate in the deletion discussion at the nomination page. —Community Tech bot (talk) 00:54, 22 April 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  A Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion 

message: I looked at languages from Chinese and korean till spanish.
In all of them; the common element "AZ" that in persian means from; is present. In some languages it has the form of C,D,sta;and so on.
Many thanks Amir Arab 194.86.153.167 (talk) 13:05, 20 January 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  The most common grammar element 

message: In examples, the meaning of the text should be obvious, or at least understandable to the reader. If not, then the reader has a hard time figuring out details of what the example represents. For example, "The cricketer was given out leg before wicket." is simply impossible to understand for others than the British. (What is "give out leg", what is "wicket", and is "before" here spatial or temporal?) In other words, the example is useless and serves no purpose here. Gwrede (talk) 16:57, 22 February 2021 (UTC)
replies: text: Frankly, I don't understand it either, but other than the British, many Jamaicans, Pakistanis and Indians will know what it means :) But since the clause is just as easy to parse as , it is quite obvious that is not an example for a "complement of a copula", since "was" is not a copula here, but part of a passive predicate. I'll remove the sample sentence. –Austronesier (talk) 19:07, 22 February 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  Example text should be understandable 

message: I don't understand how to do that.
what is that?:
a. on the left side of the page there are links to the page in other languages.
b. there is an article about adpositions in hebrew
c. the hebrew page include a link to the english page
d. the english page, however, does not.
e. how do I add the link in that place?
f. I apologise for my bad english 
2A02:ED1:F000:3754:8902:D9F8:CE7:9CDA (talk) 09:42, 4 August 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  languages - hebrew. 

message: I just never thought of one way being more correct than the other.￼ 199.119.235.213 (talk) 13:18, 6 April 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Is it grammatically incorrect to say "notwithstanding financial limitations"? 

message: Prepositions or postpositions explain where someone is in relation to something else. 82.16.120.35 (talk) 19:54, 28 November 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Prepositions