Postpositional phrase

Encyclopedia : P : PO : POS : Postpositional phrase

A postpositional phrase (PP) is a linguistic term for a phrase whose head is a postposition. The term is used in syntax.

English has prepositional phrases instead of postpositional phrases, since it does not use postpositions but prepositions, which differ in that they precede their objects. A term for both prepositions and postpositions is adposition, and therefore prepositional and postpositional phrases are sometimes called adpositional phrases.

In languages with postpositions, for example Basque, Estonian, Finnish, Japanese, and Tamil, the morpheme that corresponds to an English preposition occurs after its complement. In these languages, typical adpositional phrases have their adposition at the end. In examples from Japanese:

Mise ni ("to the store")
Ie kara ("from the house")
Hashi de ("with chopsticks")

(Note that we treat "The X" as a single component in these examples.)

Such phrases generally act as complements and adjuncts of noun phrases and verb phrases.

Postpositional phrase

See also