Two types of intransitive adpositions can be distinguished. First, there are adpositions with an external argument. They may be predicated from their external argument. In the sentence below, the sentence subject ek I is the external argument of the adposition buite.

Intransitive adpositions with an external argument have meaning of their own. They need not be selected by the verb. The following example involves an adposition with an independent meaning. The adposition op up contains the meaning of 'to be depleted', and not the verb raak become.

Second, there are intransitive adpositions without an external argument. They are selected by the verb (and also referred to as verbal particles), as exemplified below, with the adposition bracketed in each case.

There are no intransitive adpositions of which the meaning is determined by an adjective, a noun or a preposition.

Verbal particles may derive from nouns, adjectives and postpositions, and may be stranded at the end of the clause in verb-second position, which is mainly the case in main clauses, as is illustrated by the pair of examples below.

Verbal particles may have an independent meaning, but their meaning usually depends on the verb which selects them, as is evident from the previous example.

The following intransitive spatial adpositions occur in Afrikaans, and an example of the usage of each is given in (6).

• binne inside
• buite outside
• bo above, upstairs
• onder below, downstairs
• agter behind, in the back
• voor front, in the front

Some adpositions have two forms, depending on whether they appear as a preposition or as a postposition. Thus the preposition met with has the postposition pendant mee, and tot until appears in postposition form as toe. Note that mee and toe may occur as an intransitive adposition in verbal forms such as meewerk contribute or toespreek, as illustrated by the following examples.

However, the form tot never appears as an intransitive adposition. This could support an argument that intransitive postpositions do not derive from prepositions but from transitive postpositions.

There are also intransitive adpositions that are not homophonous to either prepositions or postpositions. A case in point is the adposition weg away, gone. This can be used as an adposition with an external argument, as in example (8).

An example of this adposition without an external argument occurs in separable complex verbs with weg as a verbal particle: