ADP: adposition
Definition
Armenian has prepositions and postpositions but no circumpositions. They occur before or after a complement noun phrase (noun or pronoun) and 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 inflected 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 preceding noun. Localizers are still tagged as ADP, but are annotated with additional features and the 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, they are still tagged as ADP. Their adverbial function is reflected by additional features and by the dependency relation obl.
- Հետո սկսում ես հետները չշփվել/Heto sksowm es hetnerë čšp’vel “Then you stop communicating with them.”
Note also that Armenian has 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: ընթացքում/ënt’ac’k’owm “during, in the course of”, դեպքում/depk’owm “in case”, կողքին/koġk’in “next to”, պատճառով/patč̣aṙov “because of”.
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]