What is the name used to refer to the subset of particles (or prepositions) which mark sentence's arguments/complements in a language?
For example, suppose that the prepositions sub, dir, and ind were used in English to mark the subject, the direct object and the indirect object of a sentence, respectively; so the phrase "Paul gave his wife a necklace" would be "Gave sub Paul ind his wife dir a necklace". What would be the name of this particular subset of function words?
Another example, in Tahitian, is for the sentence "Maria have bought/traded this car". It is a VSO language, I am using the symbol "∅" to indicate the absence of particle/preposition.
- Active form: 'Ua ho'o ∅ Maria i teienei va'a.
- Passive form: 'Ua ho'ona ∅ teienei va'a e Maria.
In the active predicate 'ua ho'o (to have bought), the agent argument Maria isn't marked (it is the zero-argument, marked with no particle), but the patient argument teienei va'a (this car) is marked with the "patient particle" i.
In the passive predicate 'ua ho'ona (to have been bought), the patient argument teienei va'a isn't marked (it is the zero-argument), but the agent argument is marked with the "agent particle" e.
These particles "i, e" (and others, in the case of more complex predicates) are members of the lexical class of the "argument markers", whose name I'm looking for.
The closest I have found is complementizer, but it is used to refer to particles which make a dependent clause into another sentence's argument (e.g., "I hope that it works.")