Agreeing adpositions
Distribution
Adpositions that index the feature values of their complement or a clause level argument, are widely, though not evenly distributed across the world’s languages, as illustrated by Bakker (2013). In his stratified sample of 378 languages, 106 exhibited person marking on their adpositions. Adpositions indexing person were found to be abundant in Mesoamerica and the Pacific, but absent in Australia and rare in Southeast Asia.
Complement indexation is the most common pattern of agreement on adpositions. Agreement with a phrase external controller is much less frequently encountered, with only a handful of examples attested outside of the Nakh-Dagestanian family (Chumakina et al. 2022; Bond et al. 2023). For detailed descriptions of adposition agreement see Borsley (2009) on Welsh, Souag (2015) on the Songhay language Kwarandzyey, and Olsson (2023) for an analysis of postposition agreement in the Anim language Coastal Marind.
The mapped data set is currently limited to those varieties included in Bond et al. (2022).
Map 2.1. Languages with adposition agreement included in Bond et al. (2022).
Data
| Variety | Genus | Sources |
|---|---|---|
| Amur Nivkh |  Nivkh | Planfilov 1965; Gruzdeva 1998; Nedjalkov & Otaina 2013 |
| Aqusha Dargwa |  Dagestanian | van den Berg 1999; Ganenkov 2018 |
| Archi | Dagestanian | Kibrik 1977; Bond et al. 2016; Polinsky et al. 2017 |
| Arosi |  Oceanic | Capell 1971; Lynch & Horoi 2002 |
| Au |  Nuclear Torricelli | Scorza 1985 |
| Avar | Dagestanian | Alekseev & Ataev 1998; Rudnev 2020 |
| Bagwalal | Dagestanian | Kibrik 2001 |
| Bezhta | Dagestanian | Comrie, Khalilov & Khalilova 2015 |
| Botlikh | Dagestanian | Saidova & Abusov 2012 |
| Central Pashto |  Iranian | Tegey & Robson 1996; Brugman 2014; David & Goodman 2014; Fox & David 2014 |
| Chamalal | Dagestanian | Magomedova 1999 |
| Coastal Marind |  Anim | Olsson 2017; Olsson 2021; Olsson 2023 |
| Finnish |  Finnic | Lehman 1982; Karlsson 2018 |
| Gagatl Andi | Dagestanian | Salimov 2010 |
| Godoberi | Dagestanian | Saidova 1973; Kibrik 1995; Haspelmath 1999; Haspelmath 1996 |
| Gujarati |  Indo-Aryan | Hook & Joshi 1991; Cardona & Suthar 2003; Bhatt 2005 |
| Hinuq | Dagestanian | Forker 2013 |
| Hopi |  Uto-Aztecan | Langacker 1977; Kalectaca 1978; Masayesva-Jeanne 1978; Bliss 2004 |
| Hungarian |  Hungarian | Lehman 1982; Kenesei, Vago & Fenyvesi 1998; p.c. Dávid Győrfi |
| Inkhoqwari Khwarshi | Dagestanian | Khalilova 2009; Chumakina & Lyutikova 2023 |
| Irish |  Celtic | Greene 1966; Brennan 2008; Stenson 2020 |
| Kairiru | Oceanic | Wivell 1981; Ross 2002 |
| Kpelle |  Mande | Idiatov 2010; Konoshenko 2013; Konoshenko 2015 |
| Kwarandzyey |  Songhay | Souag 2010; Souag 2015 |
| Lak | Dagestanian | Kazenin 2013 |
| Lakota |  Siouan | Rood & Taylor 1996; Pustet 2000 |
| Lavukaleve |  Lavukaleve | Terrill 2003 |
| Mano | Mande | Idiatov 2010; Konoshenko 2013; Konoshenko 2015 |
| Mawng |  Iwaidjan | Evans 2000; Singer 2006 |
| Northern Akhwakh | Dagestanian | Creissels 2012; Creissels 2018 |
| Ripano |  Romance | Paciaroni & Loporcaro 2018; Lopocaro et al. 2020; Paciaroni 2023; D'Alessandro 2020 |
| Southern Akhwakh | Dagestanian | Muraviev, forthcoming |
| Suabo |  Inanwatan | de Vries 2004 |
| Tanti Dargwa | Dagestanian | Sumbatova & Lander 2014; Sumbatova 2023; p.c. Nina Sumbatova |
| Tehit |  West Birds Head | Flassy 1991; Hesse 2000 |
| Teop | Oceanic | Mosel & Thiesen 2007; Mosel 2010; Mosel n.d. |
| Tindi | Dagestanian | Magomedova 2003 |
| Tsakhur | Dagestanian | Ibragimov 1990; Kibrik 1999a ; Kibrik 1999b; Kazenin & Testelets 1999 |
| Tundra Nenets |  Samoyedic | Nikolaeva 2014 |
| Udihe |  Tungusic | Nikolaeva & Tolskaya 2001 |
| Welsh | Celtic | Borsley 2009 |
| Zilo Andi | Dagestanian | Kaye 2023; Kaye, in press; Kaye et al., in press |
References
Bakker, Dik. 2013. ‘Person marking on adpositions’, in Matthew S. Dryer & Martin Haspelmath (eds), The World Atlas of Language Structures Online. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. Available at: https://wals.info/chapter/48 [Accessed: 03 March 2023]. [First published in Martin Haspelmath, Matthew S. Dryer, David Gil, & Bernard Comrie (eds). 2005. The World Atlas of Language Structures. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 198–201.]
Bond, Oliver, Marina Chumakina & Steven Kaye. 2023. ‘Unusual agreement targets in unexpected domains’, in Marina Chumakina, Oliver Bond & Steven Kaye (eds), Agreement beyond the verb. Unusual targets, unexpected domains, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1-47.
Bond, Oliver, Steven Kaye & Marina Chumakina. 2022. A typology of agreement targets. Paper given at the 55th Societas Linguistica Europaea meeting (SLE 55), University of Bucharest, August 26, 2022.
Borsley, Robert D. 2009. ‘On the superficiality of Welsh agreement’, Natural Language & Linguistic Theory, 27/2: 225–65.
Chumakina, Marina, Oliver Bond & Steven Kaye. 2022. Agreeing adpositions. Paper given at the 14th Conference of the Association of Linguistic Typology (ALT 14), University of Texas at Austin, December 15, 2022.
Olsson, Bruno. 2023. ‘Agreeing postpositions and unexpected agreement in Coastal Marind’, in Marina Chumakina, Oliver Bond & Steven Kaye (eds), Agreement beyond the verb. Unusual targets, unexpected domains, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 243–263.
Souag, Lameen. 2015. ‘How to make a comitative preposition agree with its external argument: Songhay and the typology of conjunction and agreement’, in Jürg Fleischer, Elisabeth Rieken, & Paul Widmer (eds), Agreement from a diachronic perspective. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton, 75–100.