Inflected preposition

In linguistics, an inflected preposition is a type of word that occurs in some languages, that corresponds to the combination of a preposition and a personal pronoun. For instance, the Welsh word iddo (/ɪðɔ/) is an inflected form of the preposition i meaning "to/for him"; it would not be grammatically correct to say *i ef. There are many different names for inflected prepositions, including conjugated preposition, pronominal preposition, prepositional pronoun, and suffixed pronoun. (But note that the term prepositional pronoun also has a different sense, for which see Prepositional pronoun.) Historically, inflected prepositions can develop from the contraction of a preposition with a personal pronoun; however, they are commonly reanalysed as inflected words by native speakers and by traditional grammar. Language change over time can obscure the similarity between the conjugated preposition and the preposition-pronoun combination. For example, in Scottish Gaelic "with" is le /lɛ/ and "him" is e /ɛ/, but "with him" is leis /leʃ/. All Insular Celtic languages have inflected prepositions; these languages include Scottish Gaelic, Irish, Manx, Welsh, Cornish and Breton. The following table shows the inflected forms of the preposition aig (at). These forms are a combination of preposition and pronoun, and are obligatory; that is, the separate preposition plus pronoun *aig mi "at me" is ungrammatical. Also no separate pronoun may also be given after these combined forms. (So *agam mi is ungrammatical.) {| class="wikitable" |- ! colspan="2" | ! Singular