The equative verb is sometimes, under as yet unknown circumstances, deleted; and simi- larly, the articles are sometimes deleted. This means that at times it is impossible to know
for sure whether a particular to is an article or a verb. For example, 99 Ama
to toho?
what theis
this ‘What is this?’
2.5 Postpositions
Arawak postpositions represent a large class of words which function in most situations very simi- larly to English prepositions, except that they follow, rather than precede, their object NP.
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100 a. Na-bina-bo to
kasiri sikoa
LOKHODI. they-dance-CONT
the cassava.beer
house in
‘They are dancing in the cassava-beer house.’ b. To
kodibio balyta
ada dyna
DIAKO. the
bird sit
tree arm
on ‘The bird sat on a branch.’
c. Kia BENA
n-osa kaboja
NINRO. that
after they-go
planting.ground to
‘After that, they went to their planting ground.’
2.5.1 The Lexical Status of Postpositions
It is not entirely clear that postpositions should be considered as a separate lexical class apart from nouns or verbs. One possible alternative might be to assume that postpositions
should be considered verbs—that is, locative stative verbs. This proposal is attractive be- cause, in fact, locative postpositions
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can serve as the main verb of a sentence if they are inflected with stative verb suffixes see also sections on stative sentences 3.2.3.
101 a. Ada dyna
diako-ka no,
to kodibio.
tree arm
on-PERF it
the bird
‘It, the bird, is on a branch.’ b. Tho-loko-ka
no. it-in-PERF
it ‘It is in it e.g. the cassava beer is in a gourd.’
However, unlike verbs, postpositions can occur without the subordinating morpheme -n, even when they are not the main verb of a sentence. For example, notice that neither of the postposi-
tions in the following examples is subordinated i.e. receives the suffix -n, whereas the word moroda-n
‘fly’ in the last example is subordinated, thus receiving the suffix -n. 44
Phonology and Morphology
49
See also de Goeje 1928, Hickerson 1953, and Taylor 1970a and 1970b.
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This is not to say that only locative postpositions can be used as verbs; however, these are the only ones for which I have clear evidence.
102 a. Na-dykha to kama kalhao-bana diako. they-see the tapir grass-place on
‘They saw the tapir on the savannah.’ b. Ly-dykha to kodibio moroda-n ly-waria.
he-saw the bird fly-SUB him-away.from ‘He saw the bird fly away from him.’
Postpositions also differ from verbs in that they cannot easily be said in isolation. For ex- ample, although event verbs and stative verbs have citation forms stem+SUB, there
seems to be no citation form for postpositions.
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This has led some e.g. Hickerson 1953 to list all postpositions as suffixes.
Another alternative classification of postpositions is alluded to by Taylor 1970b:31—to consider them nouns. Taylor points out that, in fact, there are several nouns which are
homophonous, or nearly homophonous, with semantically similar postpositions. For example, he mentions:
103 ly-sibo
‘his face’ ly-sibon
‘in front of him’ da-khona
‘my body’ da-khonan
‘about me’ da-dike
‘my tracks’ da-dike
‘after me’ However, these correspondences are very sporadic; and in general, postpositions cannot be
used as nouns, nor do they enter into the kinds of derivational processes other nouns do. Although the arguments for or against treating postpositions as separate from verbs and
nominals are not conclusive, postpositions are treated separately in the remainder of this study.
2.5.2 Kinds of Postpositions
Arawak postpositions may be roughly divided into several groups. The largest of these groups consists of postpositions having to do with locations. A smaller group consists of ba-
sically temporal postpositions. In addition, there is a group of postpositions with more spe- cialized functions. Figure 9 gives a sampling.
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2.5.3 Abbreviations, Compounds, and Suffixes
Two of the locational postpositions in Figure 9, nin ‘at’ and ninro ‘toward’, can be phono- logically reduced to -n and -nro, respectively, and often occur as suffixes
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on nouns or on other postpositions.
104 a. bahy nin bahy-n
‘at home’ kaboja nin
kaboja-n ‘at the planting ground’
2.5 Postpositions 45
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Postposition stems are used in this study when referring to postpositions. Most Arawak speakers find this puzzling and prefer to add an appropriate pronoun prefix to them e.g. tho-loko ‘in it’.
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See also the discussion of noun shape classes 2.3.3.4 regarding the use of the various Arawak postpositions corresponding to the English preposition ‘in’.
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That these are suffixes can be deduced from the fact that they cannot receive word stress, and they cannot receive pronoun prefixes as other postpositions can.
