1 Adpositions Niina Ning Zhang revised on Aug. 5, 2014 In R. Sybesma, W. Behr, Y. Gu, Z. Handel, C.-T. J. Huang, & J. Myers (Eds.), Encyclopedia of Chinese Language and Linguistics. Leiden: Brill. (in press) Adposition is a general term to cover preposition and postposition. A preposition precedes its NP complement, whereas a postposition follows its NP complement. This entry addresses the issue whether Chinese has prepositions in Part I, and the issue whether the language has postpositions in Part II. Part I Prepositions 1.1 Preposition as an independent category Chinese has many prepositions. Some examples in Mandarin Chinese are listed in (1) (see Chao 1968:768-769) (all Chinese examples in this entry are from this variety of the language). (1) chú-le 除了 ‘except for, besides, in addition’ cóng 從 ‘from’ duìyú 對於 ‘with regard to, of’ guānyú 關於 ‘about, concerning, with regard to’ jù 距 ‘away from' jùlí 距離 ‘away from' wèi 為 ‘for (the sake of), on behalf of’ wèi-le 為了 ‘because of, for (the sake of), in order to’ yīnwèi 因為 ‘because (of)’ zhìyú 至於 ‘as for, as to’ zìcóng 自從 ‘since’ The language also has many prepositions which share their forms with verbs, as shown in (2) (see Chao 1968:768-769). (2) Prep dāng(zhe) 當(著) ‘in front of, at’; Verb dāng 當 ‘serve as, consider as; think, believe’ Prep dào 到 ‘until, to’; Verb dào 到 ‘arrive’ Prep duì 對 ‘toward, of’; Verb duì 對 ‘be opposite’ Prep lí 離 ‘away from’; Verb lí 離 ‘leave, separate’ Prep gěi 給 ‘to, for’; Verb gěi 給 ‘give’ Prep zài 在 ‘in, at’; Verb zài 在 ‘be at’ Prepositions in Chinese share properties with prepositions in other languages, and these properties distinguish them from nouns, verbs, and adjectives. First, unlike nouns, they may not function as arguments.