ADP: adposition
Definition
Armenian has prepositions and postpositions but no circumpositions. They occur before or after a complement noun phrase (noun, pronoun) and they form a single structure with the complement to express its grammatical and semantic relation to another unit within a clause.
Some prepositions take the form of fixed multiword expressions, e.g. ի սեր/i ser “for the sake of”, ի պատիվ/i pativ “in honor of”. The component words are then still tagged according to their basic usage (ի/i is ADP, սեր/ser is NOUN, etc.) and their status as multiword expressions is accounted for in the syntactic annotation.
Note that the Armenian ADP also covers “localizers”. These are a closed set of postpositions (traditionally known as “improper adpositions”) which inflect for Case, Number[psor] and Person[psor] and typically indicate spatial information in relation to the noun preceding it. Localizers are still tagged as ADP, but are labeled with additional features and with special dependency relation case:loc.
Here is the list of commonly used localizers: միջի/miǰi, միջից/miǰic’, միջով/miǰov, ետևից/etewic’, հետևից/hetewic’, հետևում/hetewowm, վրայի/vrayi, վրայից/vrayic’, վրայով/vrayov, տակի/taki, տակից/takic’, տակով/takov, մոտի/moti, մոտից/motic’, մոտով/motov, առջևի/aṙǰewi, առջևից/aṙǰewic’, առջևով/aṙǰewov.
- Վերցրեց գիրքը սեղանի վրայից։/Verc’rec’ girk’ë seġani vrayic’ “He took the book off the table.”
- Ճանապարհն անցնում էր դաշտերի միջով։/Č̣anaparhn anc’nowm ēr dašteri miǰov “The road passed through the fields.”
Although a few localizers have further grammaticalized into adverbials denoting spatial concepts, localizers with the adverbial function are still tagged as ADP (but are labeled with additional features and with the dependency relation obl).
- Հետո սկսում ես հետները չշփվել/Heto sksowm es hetnerë čšp’vel “Then you stop communicating with them.”
Note also that there are a number of case-marking elements (traditionally called “adpositional words”), derived from a closed set of nouns, adjectives/participles or adverbs. They are tagged based on their main part-of-speech category in UPOS. Their function as a part of speech different from that indicated by their UPOS tag is marked by the ExtPos feature.
- անհրաժեշտության դեպքում/anhražeštowt’yan depk’owm “in case of necessity”
Examples
- Prepositions: ի/i “for, in”, առ/ar “up to”; ըստ/ëst “according to”
- Postpositions: համար/hamar “for”; հանդերձ/handerj “together with”; պես/pes “as”
- Localizers / postpositions: մոտ/mot “at”; վրա/vra “on”; մեջ/meǰ “in”; տակ/tak “under”; առաջ/araǰ, առջև/arǰew, դիմաց/dimac’ “in front of, opposite, ahead of”
- Case-marking words: հետո/heto “after”
ADP in other languages: [axm] [bej] [bg] [bm] [cs] [cy] [da] [el] [en] [es] [et] [fi] [fro] [fr] [ga] [gn] [grc] [gub] [hu] [hy] [it] [ja] [ka] [kk] [kpv] [ky] [myv] [naq] [nmf] [no] [oge] [pcm] [ps] [pt] [qpm] [ru] [sl] [sv] [tpn] [tr] [tt] [uk] [u] [urj] [xcl] [xmf] [yue] [zh]