Meaning & use
postpositives
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“postpositives” is a form of “postpositive”.
Meanings
nouncountabletechnical
Words, especially adjectives, that normally follow the noun they describe rather than coming before it.
Grammar: Countable noun, usually used in the plural when talking about this class of words as a group; the singular 'postpositive' refers to one such word.
Patterns
- a postpositive in a noun phrase
- postpositives in English
- postpositives in French and Spanish
In the phrase 'the president elect', 'elect' is one of the postpositives of English.
French has far more postpositives than English, which is why 'une voiture rouge' puts the color after the noun.
Students often meet postpositives in fixed phrases like 'court martial' and 'attorney general'.
nouncountabletechnical
A word placed immediately after another word, rather than before it, within a phrase.
Grammar: Same countable noun, but used more generally for any element that follows its head word, not only adjectives.
Patterns
- a postpositive to a noun
- treat something as a postpositive
Some grammars treat certain particles as postpositives attached to the verb.
The teacher marked 'galore' as a postpositive because it always trails the noun it modifies.
Word forms
| singular | postpositive |
|---|
Common combinations
- adjective postpositive
- 'Afire' is an adjective postpositive in a phrase like 'the house afire'.
- postpositive position
- Words in postpositive position come after the noun, as in 'something useful'.
- a postpositive modifier
- In 'the people responsible', 'responsible' works as a postpositive modifier.
- postpositive adjectives in English
- Postpositive adjectives in English often appear in legal and official titles.
- fixed postpositive phrases
- Learners memorize fixed postpositive phrases such as 'heir apparent' and 'body politic'.
Synonyms and how they differ
- postnominal
- A more technical term used in linguistics for a modifier that follows its noun; 'postpositive' is the broader everyday term in grammar teaching.
- postmodifier
- Refers to any word or phrase that comes after and limits a noun; 'postpositive' is narrower because it usually means a single adjective in that slot.
Opposites
Word family
- postpositive adjective
- Describing a word that is placed after the word it relates to.
- postpositively adverb
- In a position after the noun or head word, as in 'used postpositively'.
- postposition noun
- A word like 'ago' or 'notwithstanding' that behaves like a preposition but follows its object.
- postpose verb
- To place a word after another word in a sentence.
Commonly confused: postpositives or postposition? postpositives or preposition?
postpositives vs postposition
A postposition is a function word placed after its object, such as 'ago' in 'three years ago'; a postpositive is usually an adjective placed after its noun.
postpositives vs preposition
A preposition comes before its object ('in the box'), while a postpositive comes after the word it modifies.
Practice
Which sentence uses a postpositive adjective correctly?
Choose one answer.
'President elect' is a fixed phrase in which the adjective follows the noun, which is exactly what a postpositive does. Option 0 puts the adjective in the normal pre-noun slot, where 'elect' is not used in this sense, and option 2 places it after the whole phrase, which is not how postpositives work.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “postpositives”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.