right size of preposition inventory?

[collect_gluesticks]

I've hit a snag in my conlang, and was wondering if anyone could chime in.

I'm deciding on prepositions for my conlang, "Yeh" . So far I have 11. Here's what I have so far: https://rentry.co/hq8af

I want to avoid relexing English. To prevent that, I'm trying to divide the semantic space differently than English does. Additionally, I'm trying to keep the number of prepositions small. So in situations where English may have a dedicated adposition or case, Yeh would use a combination of a preposition and relational noun. (Example: "between" might be rendered as "at the middle of" in Yeh)

Here's the issue I'm having: I don't currently have a way to express comitative, benfactive, semblative or instrumental relationships with prepositions. I also don't want to include cases in the language. Yet I imagine these sorts of relationships would come up in speech frequently. So how unusual would it be, for a natural language, to have prepositions for a variety of spatial and temporal relationships, but leave these ones out?

And for languages that do exclude these relationships from adpositions or cases, how do they express these relationships? I have heard there is such a thing as a "comitative relational noun" but I'm having trouble finding examples of how that works, in practice.

My goal is not to be 100% natural, but I'd like to hit around 80% if I can. If you notice anything obviously artificial about what I have so far, please let me know.

Thank you in advance

[Creyeditor]

You could have a look at Indonesian prepositions. The core inventory is relatively small and many things are expressed by a combination of two prepositions. It's also much less idiosyncratic than English or German prepositions.

Sometimes looking at alternative ways to express stuff in your own native language or English helps. In English you can say stuff like `in company of' for a comitative, `for the benefit of' for a benefactive relationship, etc. Another option is to use verb forms, e.g. English can express the instrumental using `using'. If these words are short-ish and some time passes, they might become even more preposition-like, e.g. `during' in English.

For relational nouns, it is kind of important how adnominal possession works in your language because relational nouns often occur in such construction, e.g. English `in company of' or `for the benefit of'. The general pattern for relational nouns in adnominal construction is [FIGURE [ADPOSITION [RELATIONAL_NOUN-POSSESSED GROUND-POSSESSOR]]], i.e. the ground (the thing that something is related to) is marked as a possessor, the relational noun is marked like a possessed noun and introduced by an adposition and the figure (the thing that is located or related to s.th.) is the head of the whole thing.

Hope that helps a bit.

[eldin raigmore]

@collect_gluesticks :
If you have all of prepositions, case-endings, and postpositions, and each is optional and you can have any combination of one (or no) preposition, one (or no) case ending, and one (or no) postposition; and each such combination has different semantics; you could get 216 meanings out of five prepositions and five case endings and five postpositions.
(5+1)*(5+1)*(5+1) = 216
That’s bound to be plenty!
Actually with three of each you could get (3+1)*(3+1)*(3+1) = 64 meanings; which I’ll bet is already plenty.
….
I got that idea from Greek.

[WeepingElf]

My Indo-European "elflang" Old Albic has no "true" prepositiions. It has four cases, and a number of "relational nouns", i.e. nouns that express notions such as 'front', 'back', 'left', 'right', 'inside', 'outside', etc., which take nouns as possessors and are used in lieu of prepositions. In one daughter language (Madeirese) some of these become "secondary cases" by forming compounds of lexical noun and relational noun, resulting in a "case construction kit" as found in some Northeast Caucasian languages.

[Salmoneus]

I've hit a snag in my conlang, and was wondering if anyone could chime in.

I'm deciding on prepositions for my conlang, "Yeh" . So far I have 11. Here's what I have so far: https://rentry.co/hq8af

I want to avoid relexing English. To prevent that, I'm trying to divide the semantic space differently than English does. Additionally, I'm trying to keep the number of prepositions small. So in situations where English may have a dedicated adposition or case, Yeh would use a combination of a preposition and relational noun. (Example: "between" might be rendered as "at the middle of" in Yeh)

Here's the issue I'm having: I don't currently have a way to express comitative, benfactive, semblative or instrumental relationships with prepositions.

I'm not sure it's helpful to use case names here, as English doesn't have cases, and there is no 'objective' meaning for any of these cases. [case names are simplifying labels applied to complicated realities, not a toolkit of pre-existing modules]. I'd suggest using ordinary English constructions - so I take it you mean "with", "for" (for/to the benefit of), "like" and "using"?

I also don't want to include cases in the language. Yet I imagine these sorts of relationships would come up in speech frequently. So how unusual would it be, for a natural language, to have prepositions for a variety of spatial and temporal relationships, but leave these ones out?

Nothing will be 'left out' per se - it's just that prepositions will divide the semantic space differently than in English, and sometimes precision will require indirect relationals (i.e. a preposition paired with a case, a verb, a relational noun, or another preposition).

And for languages that do exclude these relationships from adpositions or cases, how do they express these relationships? I have heard there is such a thing as a "comitative relational noun" but I'm having trouble finding examples of how that works, in practice.

You have four main options for these relations: adpositions, nouns, verbs, and cases. I would expect that some language also makes significant use of adjectives in this regard, but I'm not aware of one.

First, adpositions. Languages vary dramatically in their number of prepositions (/postpositions, etc). English has quite a lot. Many languages only have one or two. To find a way to express a relation without a dedicated adpositions, the easiest way is simply to break up the semantic space differently: have one preposition in your language cover what English uses two different prepositions to cover.

For your examples:
WITH - in English originally meant 'against', so 'across' could work. More likely though are 'at' and 'in the vicinity of' (let's just call it 'by' for now)
USING - English often means 'with', and here in particular I think 'across' would work well. English also uses 'through', which is of course close in meaning to 'under'. English also uses 'by', which of course primarily means 'in the vicinity of'. But 'at' would also work. Or 'on', which English occasionally uses (he bought it ON credit), and which is often used for responsibility more generally.
LIKE - 'at' or 'by' would do, particularly if 'at' is also 'to'. 'Under', 'on'. Definitely 'in', which can easily be used for identities and hence for resemblances. Or 'of', which of course English uses (a picture OF the president, a likeness OF the boy). Definitely 'on the subject of'!
FOR - 'to' is the obvious one, but 'under' would also work by analogy with 'on' for responsibility. Or 'on the subject of'.

You can also create more specific compound prepositions by combining prepositions.

Second, relational nouns. The noun expresses a relation to the thing, and the preposition links the head to that relation. In English, 'with' can be expressed with relational nouns such as 'company' and 'presence', or 'possession' in some cases: in the company of, in the presence of, in the possession of [relational nouns in English usually need 'of' to link them to the noun, though often not with pronouns ("in his presence"). This additional preposition often isn't needed in languages where relational nouns are more important.] 'Using' can use 'use', 'aid' or 'means'. 'Like' can use 'semblance', 'likeness', 'imitation', etc. 'For' can use 'benefit', 'profit', etc.

[In English, relational nouns are typically used to plug gaps in the main prepositional system, so a lot of them have quite abstract meanings, although moe physical ones are also common ('on top of', etc).]

Third, verbs. The veb expresses the relation. In English, 'with' can be expressed wth verbs like 'accompanying', or (for inanimates) 'taking', 'holding', 'having', etc. 'Using' usualy uses... well, 'using'. Or 'employing', 'applying', 'exploiting', etc. 'Like' can use 'resembling', etc. 'For' can use 'benefiting', 'rewarding', profiting', etc.

Fourth, cases. You've said you don't want more of these.


But some combination of prepositions, verbs and nouns should do the job for you.

[collect_gluesticks]

Thank you everyone for your responses. I'm now more confident that sticking to this smaller set of prepositions wouldn't be infeasible or unnatural. But I will have to be clever in how the prepositions are reused to convey different relationships.

Your examples and suggestions have given me a lot of inspiration. I've already started a second draft of my prepositions, which will extend some of my existing prepositions, and include examples of prepositions used in combination with relational nouns.

[Omzinesý]

Hindi is also a lang with a small inventory of postpositions.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hindustan ... tpositions