Prepositions

Hi,

The 'pre' is from the Latin 'prae', meaning 'before'.
A preposition is a word that you place before another word.

Clive

Thanks

AH020387why are they called 'prepositions'

Because they are placed before (pre) the nouns they are associated with. If we placed them after (post) the associated nouns, we would call them postpositions. Some languages use postpositions. In such languages, they have sentences like "The cat is hiding the stove behind" or "I put the letters the t

Thanks, I'm also trying to learn German, would you know if German has postpositions?

My knowledge of German is limited, but I don't think that it contains postpositions.

CJ

Thanks

CalifJim If we placed them after (post) the associated nouns, we would call them postpositions. Some languages use postpositions.

English is one of those languages: This is the book that I am interested in. For some mysterious reason postpositions are called prepositions

According to most accounts of it that I have read, your example is not considered to contain a postposition. It's usually explained as merely a transformation of I am interested in that book for the purposes of relativizing it. A true postposition would be: I am interested that book in.

In the full sentence the gap is thus:

This is the book that

CalifJimAccording to most accounts of it that I have read, your example is not considered to contain a postposition. It's usually explained as merely a transformation of I am interested in that book for the purposes of relativizing it. A true postposition would be: I am interested that book in.

That makes sense. Do you know how they explain for

Hello calif, this is irrelelvant to the topoic at hand but what do you mean by the word 'relativizing':

According to most accounts of it that I have read, your example is not considered to contain a postposition. It's usually explained as merely a transformation of I am interested in that book for the purposes of relativizing it. A true postposition would be: I