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
53
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’.
52
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.
b. bahy ninro bahy-nro
‘toward home’ kaboja ninro
kaboja-nro ‘to the planting ground’
Another of the locational postpositions, waria ‘away from’, can also be reduced to -aria; but as a suffix, it only seems to occur as a directional on other postpositions see below, not on nouns.
LOCATIONAL POSTPOSITIONS abon
‘under’ amyn
‘by, at’ boloko
‘at the side, end’ diako
‘on the surface of’ dikhi
‘behind, following’ inabo
‘behind, following’ khiradi
‘near, next to’ khona
‘on not on top of’ koboroko
‘among, in a living body’ koloko
‘in fire, sunshine, etc.’ kosan
‘next to’ loko
‘in in a hollow or solid object’ maja, maria
‘general vicinity, to the side of’ makhana
‘between’ nakanrokon
‘in the midst of’ nin
‘at any location, belonging to’ ninro
‘toward’ olaboan
‘opposite side’ rakon
‘in in a fluid’ rokon
‘in on the inside surface of’ waria
‘away from’ TEMPORAL POSTPOSITIONS
bena ‘after’
bora ‘before’
kha ‘while’
OTHER POSTPOSITIONS abo
‘with instrumental’ adi
‘greater than, above’ doma
‘because, on account of’ farokha
‘if’ some dialects: harokha khonan
‘about, concerning’ myn
‘to, for benefactive, IO’ oma
‘with accompaniment’ Figure 9. Selected Arawak Postpositions
46 Phonology and Morphology
