Trying to understand what a preposition is. Wikipedia gives some hints (adpositions are the general case of preposition/postposition/circumposition):
- ...Adpositions are classed as syntactic elements....
- ...Adpositions are among the most frequently occurring words in languages that have them....
- ...Many simple adpositions are derived from complex forms (e.g., with + in → within, by + side → beside) through grammaticalisation....
- ...Adpositions typically have noun phrases as complements....
- ...Adpositions can be used to express a wide range of semantic relations between their complement and the rest of the context. The relations expressed may be spatial (denoting location or direction), temporal (denoting position in time), or relations expressing comparison, content, agent, instrument, means, manner, cause, purpose, reference, etc....
- ...Most common adpositions are highly polysemous (they have various different meanings)....
- ...In some contexts (as in the case of some phrasal verbs) the choice of adposition may be determined by another element in the construction or be fixed by the construction as a whole. Here the adposition may have little independent semantic content of its own, and there may be no clear reason why the particular adposition is used rather than another. Examples of such expressions are: ...dispense with, listen to, insist on, proud of, good at....
So basically, sometimes the rules for how you combine a preposition with another word, like listen to, is arbitrary. Wondering if it is actually arbitrary, or if there is some history to it or evolution of it.
Examples include:
on
in
to
by
for
with
at
of
from
as
about
towards
in spite of
with respect to
except for
by dint of
From what I've seen, there doesn't seem to be a clear definition of what a preposition actually is. As opposed to nouns (things), and verbs (actions). It has been very hard to try and figure out what exactly is meant by the word "of" in "My friend of many years" or "to" in "I went to the store", or even "from" in "The food from the store". I mean, I get the basics, I get the definition of it and that "to" references a place, and "of" is some relationship. But I don't get what it means a deeper level.
Wondering if there are languages without prepositions (and what that looks like when translated to English), or if not, how they got there.
Sidenote, that is confusing, verb in Latin means word, so I guess I need to adjust my definition of verb.
