Circumpositions

A circumposition is a discontinuous adposition. E1 shows an example from German:

E1.	a.	[ Um [ des lieben Friedens ]_NP willen ]_AdpP gab Erna nach.
		‘For the sake of peace, Erna gave in.’
	b.	Erna gab [ um [ des lieben Friedens ]_NP willen ]_AdpP nach.
		‘Erna gave in for the sake of peace.’

um ... willen is a circumposition. The permutation is shown in order to demonstrate constituent status for the circumpositional phrase.

A circumpositional phrase has the structure of the adpositional phrase (AdpP) in S1:

Circumpositional phrase
S1.	`[ A [ X ]_NP B ]_AdpP`

A circumposition is an adposition of the form of A ... B in a construction of the form of S1. For A ...B to qualify as a circumposition, the construction must not be analyzable as either S2.a or b.

Complex adpositional phrases
S2.	a.	`[ A [ [X]_NP B ]_YP ]_AdpP`
	b.	`[ [ A [X]_NP ]_YP B ]_AdpP`

Y in S2 is any phrasal category, e.g. AdpP or NP. A circumposition does not (synchronically) consist of a preposition and a postposition; a circumpositional phrase does not consist of a postpositional phrase governed by a preposition or vice versa.

To return to E1, both of the parts of um ... willen are necessary in the construction; both um NP_Gen and NP_Gen willen are ungramatical outside this particular construction.

Diagnostic criteria for circumposition status of A...B include the following:

Neither A nor B can be substituted (by other adpositions) freely and regularly in the construction.
Neither A nor B may be omitted in a semantically regular way in the construction.
The relational meaning is non-compositional. That is, even if either A or B occur independently (as adpositions or adverbs), then the meaning that they have in isolation plays no role in the combination A...B.
A...B is in a substitution class with simple adpositions. Thus, S1 may be substituted by either of the following:
- [ [C]_Prep [X]_NP ]_PrepP
- [ [X]_NP [C]_Postp ]_PostpP
as the case may be.

Stacked binary combinations of the type S2 are a frequent diachronic source of circumpositional constructions. For instance, the German circumpositions um ... willen ‘for the sake of’, von ... wegen ‘on behalf of’ (von Amts/Rechts wegen ‘officially/legally’) and an ... statt ‘instead’ (an Kindes statt ‘as a child’) stem from earlier prepositional phrases, as follows:

[ um [ [X]_NP.Gen willen ]_NP.Dat ]_PP ‘for X's will’;
[ von [ [X]_NP.Gen wegen ]_NP.Dat ]_PP ‘from X's ways’;
[ an [ [X]_NP.Gen statt ]_NP.Dat ]_PP ‘in X's stead’.

As long as the constructions can be analyzed in this way, there is not yet any circumposition. Thus, a circumposition arises by reanalysis of a syntactically more complex construction and accompanying lexicalization of the discontinuous combination of the two relators into one lexical item.