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    Postposition + complement that is an prepositional phrase
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    In most cases, the complement of a postposition is a prepositional phrase.

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    The complement of a postposition must be an Adposition Phrase (PP), but the preposition of a PP may under certain circumstances be omitted, as in the following cases (see also no complements that are NPs):

    1
    a. Ik rûn it hûs yn
    I walked the house in
    I walked into the house
    b. De kat skeat de beam út
    the cat shot the tree out
    The cat shot out of the tree
    c. Se skopten him it toaniel op
    they kicked him the stage up
    They kicked him onto the stage

    Such examples often involve the postpositions yn in, út out, troch through, often in combination with a verb denoting motion in space or time. The prepositions yn in, út out are sometimes accompanied by the preposition ta to, as in the following example:

    2
    a. Ik rûn ta it hûs yn
    I walked to the house in
    I walked into the house
    b. De kat skeat ta de beam út
    the cat shot to the tree out
    The cat shot out of the tree

    The preposition ta to does not seem to make a significant semantic contribution in these examples, intuitively speaking. In this respect, the role of ta to is different from the role of the postposition in the following example, which makes a clear semantic contribution to the utterance:

    3
    Ûnder it hûs troch
    beneath the house through
    Beneath and past the house

    Leaving out the preposition in this example results in a different meaning:

    4
    It hûs troch
    the house through
    Through the house

    Extraction is possible from postpositional phrases containing a prepositional phrase, as shown in the three cases below:

    5
    a. Wêr rûn er [ûnder ] troch?
    what.R walked he beneath through
    What did he walk beneath (and pass)?
    b. Dan geat mem in fikse skoat wetter der boppe [ta] yn
    then poured mother a big dash water it.R above to in
    Then mother poured a big dash of water from the top side into it
    c. Wêr namen se him mei [nei] ta?
    where took they him along to to
    Where did they take him to?

    Note that the R-pronoun must be glossed and translated as a locative pronoun in the last example, not as a prepositional object, even though it functions as a prepositional complement. So no translation like the following is possible: What did they take him to? This is a matter which must be further investigated. The Prepositional Phrase can be topicalised in case the postpositional phrase containing it is selected by the verb, as the following contrast makes clear:

    6
    a. By de terp rûnen hja op
    at the mound walked they up
    The mound, they walked up
    b. *Nei Babel namen se him mei ta
    to Babel took they him along to
    To Babel, they took him along (with them)

    The last example behaves differently.

    References
      About this article
      Author(s): Eric Hoekstra
      Category: Frisian Syntax
      Keywords: adposition phrasepostpositional phrase
      Version: 1.0, December 2015
      Version history:
      version editor(s) date remarks
      1.0 Eric Hoekstra December 2015
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