Canonical and non-canonical patterns in the adpositional phrase of Western Uralic:

Notions about adpositions and adpositional phrases (AdpP) reflect the ambiguous nature of this particular domain. While postpositions and prepositions are often dealt with as lexical categories, their syntactic context determines the grammatical relations of individual postpositions. In the diachronic development of individual adpositions, the phrasal unit of AdpP plays a crucial role either enhancing or diminishing the possibility of adopting new adpositions. In Uralic both the head and complement may be inflected, which increases the divergence of the adpositional system in comparison with most neighboring contact languages. This is illustratively seen in the bulk of adpositions in Finnic, Saamic and Mordvinic, which only exceptionally include borrowed lexemes. The focus of this article is bifold. Firstly, it briefly outlines the main structural types of AdpP, particularly in Western Uralic. Secondly, it discusses why loanwords only seldom occur in the adpositional system of languages that are strongly influenced by language contact and widespread bilingualism, such as contemporary Veps and Erzya.