ADP: adposition
Definition
Western 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 վեր/i ver “since”, ի պատիւ/i patiw “in honor of”. The component words are then still tagged according to their basic usage (ի/i is ADP, վեր/ver is ADV, 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 receive additional features and the special dependency relation case:loc.
Here is the list of commonly used localizers: մէջէն/mēǰēn, ետեւէ/etewē, ետեւէն/etewēn, վրայի/vrayi, վրայէն/vrayēn, վրայով/vrayov, առջեւէն/aṙǰewēn, առաջքէն/aṙaǰk’ēn, ընդմէջէն/ëndmēǰēn, քովէն/k’ovēn, տակէն/takēn, դիմացի/dimac’i.
- Փայտաշէն հին տունի մը քովէն անցնելու ատեն Օքանին կը հանդիպինք։/P’aytašēn hin towni më k’ovēn anc’nelow aten Òk’anin kë handipink’ “While passing by an old wooden house, we meet Okan.”
- կը սլանամ ծառուղիներու մէջէն/kë slanam çaṙowġinerow mēǰēn “I dash through the alleys”
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.
- ո եւ է բեռ չունէին հետերնին/o ew ē beṙ čownēin heternin “they had no luggage with them”
Note also that Western 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 category different from that indicated by their UPOS tag is marked by the ExtPos feature.
- սորվելու նպատակով/sorvelow npatakov “for the purpose of learning”
Examples
- Prepositions: ի/i “for, in”, առ/aṙ “up to”, ըստ/ëst “according to”
- Postpositions: համար/hamar “for”, հանդերձ/handerj “together with”, պէս/pēs “as”
- Localizers / postpositions: մօտ/mòt “at”, վրայ/vray “on”, մէջ/mēǰ “in”, տակ/tak “under”, առաջ/aṙaǰ, առջեւ/aṙǰew, դիմաց/dimac’ “in front of, opposite, ahead of”
- Case-marking words: նպատակով/npatakov “for the purpose”, պատճառով/patč̣aṙov “because of”, պարագային/paragayin “in case”
ADP in other languages: [axm] [bej] [bg] [bm] [cs] [cy] [da] [el] [en] [es] [et] [fi] [fr] [fro] [ga] [gn] [grc] [gub] [hu] [hy] [hyw] [it] [ja] [ka] [kk] [kpv] [ky] [myv] [naq] [nmf] [no] [oge] [pal] [pcm] [ps] [pt] [qpm] [ru] [sl] [sv] [tpn] [tr] [tt] [u] [uk] [urj] [xcl] [xmf] [yue] [zh]