The Arden Reference Grammar

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Postpositions

A great deal of postpositions exist in Arden, which mark the secondary case of nouns and pronouns (including personal pronouns, determiners and numbers). Postpositions also govern infinitives: in this case, they act like subordinating conjunctions.

Postpositions control the case of the NP they govern. When multiple cases are allowed, usually they encode different shades of meaning or, at times, totally different functions.

Carti. 1) Genitive: "From the front of; from before". 2) Locative: "In front of; before". 3) Dative: "To the front of; until before".

Ferti, fert/fort. 1) Genitive: ergative function (the transitive agent); instrumental function: "by, by means of, with". Usually, the unstressed form (which is subject to vowel harmony) is preferred for the ergative meaning, but both forms may be employed for both functions. The stressed form is mandatory if the governed noun is followed by a clitic bound pronoun.

Gara. 1) Genitive: privative function: "Without".

Ili. 1) Genitive: ablative function: "From; since". 2) Locative: locative and adessive function: "At; near, by; in, at; when". 3) Dative: allative function: "To; until".

Þama. 1) Locative: comitative function: "With, together with; while".

The list of postpositions is still incomplete.

Subtler shades of meaning are also expressed by means of the relator nouns.

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