Editing Adposition (section)

{{short description|Class of words used to express spatial or temporal relations or mark various semantic roles}}
{{redirect-distinguish|Preposition|proposition}}

'''Adpositions''' are a [[part of speech|class of words]] used to express spatial or temporal relations (''in, under, towards, behind, ago'', etc.) or mark various [[thematic relations|semantic roles]] (''of, for'').<ref>Huddleston & Pullum (2002), chapter 7.</ref> The most common adpositions are '''prepositions''' (which precede their complement) and '''postpositions''' (which follow their complement).

An adposition typically combines with a [[noun phrase]], this being called its [[complement (grammar)|complement]], or sometimes [[object (grammar)|object]]. [[English language|English]] generally has prepositions rather than postpositions – words such as ''in, under'' and ''of'' precede their objects, such as "in England", "under the table", "of Jane" – although there are a few exceptions including ''ago'' and ''notwithstanding'', as in "three days ago" and "financial limitations notwithstanding". Some languages that use a different word order have postpositions instead (like [[Turkic languages]]) or have both types (like [[Finnish language|Finnish]]). The [[phrase]] formed by an adposition together with its complement is called an [[adpositional phrase]] (or prepositional phrase, postpositional phrase, etc.). Such a phrase can function as an adjective or as an adverb.

A less common type of adposition is the '''circumposition''', which consists of two parts that appear on each side of the complement. Other terms sometimes used for particular types of adposition include ''ambiposition'', ''inposition'' and ''interposition''. Some linguists use the word ''preposition'' in place of ''adposition'' regardless of the applicable word order.<ref name="HP602">An example is Huddleston & Pullum (2002) ("''CGEL''"), whose choice of terms is discussed on p. 602.</ref>