A preposition indicates the relationship of a noun phrase to the verb in a clause. This relationship could be circumstantial (e.g. locative, temporal, etc.) or a core argument function (S, A or P). A preposition precedes the noun phrase it occurs with. Proclitics with this function count as prepositions in Grambank. This means that phonological boundness is not relevant to this question. Circumpositions count both as prepositions and as postpositions. Inpositions (which occur somewhere in between words in a noun phrase) do not count as prepositions. Nouns that express the function of an adposition in a possessive construction (e.g. inside of the car to mean 'in the car') only count if they are visibly grammaticalized and no longer fully behave like nouns. If there is only one preposition, this is enough for a 1 here.
Yongbei Zhuang (ISO 639-3: zyb, Glottolog: yong1276)
Yongbei Zhuang, coded as 1 (Luo 2008: 335–336): the term 'preposition' is used and examples are given. There is no indication that Luo's definition deviates from ours.
Examples of prepositions are ʔdi⁶ ‘with’ (comitative), ʔju⁵ ‘in’ (locative), haɯ³ ‘to’ (dative):
ʔdi⁶ ʔaːu¹ ‘(talk) with uncle’ ʔju⁵ ʔbon⁵ ‘(sleep) in bed’ haɯ³ te¹ ‘(tell) to him’ (Luo 2008: 336)
Shabo (ISO 639-3: sbf, Glottolog: shab1252)
Shabo, coded as 0 (Kibebe 2015: 324). Kikebe mentions that there are only postpositions.
k̛on-e-m ponti heleti-ŋga tree-DEF-M on bird-exist ‘There is a bird on the tree.’ (Kibebe 2015: 325) ufe-nda kon-e-m ʃunʃeti hopu-d-mo person-F.PL tree-DEF-M under rest-2/3PL-PROG ‘Women/people are resting under the tree.’ (Kibebe 2015: 325)
Bats (ISO 639-3: bbl, Glottolog: bats1242)
Bats, coded as 0 (Holisky & Gagua 1994: 168-170): the authors give a number of examples of postpositions, but prepositions are not mentioned or found in the grammar.
t'iv-en mak Va bridge-DAT on is ‘He is on the bridge.’ (Holisky & Gagua 1994: 168) t'iv-en k'ik'el Jaix-n-as bridge-DAT under go-AOR-1SG/ERG ‘I walked under the bridge’ (Holisky & Gagua 1994: 169)
Ndam (ISO 639-3: ndm, Glottolog: ndam1251)
Ndam is coded as ? (Broß 1988: 1–60). The language possibly has no adpositions. The locative is said to be formed with tone, but the description is not comprehensive enough and does not contain enough data to be certain that there are no adpositions.
Der Lokativ wird rein tonal gebildet. Die vorliegenden Belege haben in der Grundform entweder die Tonstruktur Mittel-Mittel, die sich im Lokativ zu Tief-Tief verändert. ... oder Tief-Tief, die sich in Tief-Hoch wandelt. (The locative is formed purely by means of tone. The following examples have Mid-Mid tones as underlying melodies, which is changed into Low-Low in the locative. ... or Low-Low, which is changed into Low-High.) (Broß 1988: 58)
būgō ‘house’ → bùgò ‘in the house’ gūjʌ̄n ‘my stomach’ → gùjʌ̀n ‘in my stomach’ gə̀lè ‘concession’ → gə̀lé ‘in the concession’ (Broß 1988: 58)
Panamint (ISO 639-3: par, Glottolog: pana1305)
Panamint is a good example of a language with inpositions (cf. Dryer 2013), which is coded 0 here. Inpositions in Panamint come right after the noun, before other nominal modifiers, as is illustrated below for tukkwantü 'under', which comes in between a pronoun and an attributive numeral, and for ma 'from', which comes in between a noun and an adjective (Dayley 1989: 257).
Mümmi tukkwantü pahittünna. you.all-O under three ‘It's under you three’ (Dayley 1989: 257) Ohipim ma nati’iwantünna tiyaitaiha satü. cold from mean-O died that ‘He died from a mean cold’ (Dayley 1989: 257)
Dryer, Matthew S. 2013. Order of adposition and noun phrase. In Matthew S. Dryer & Martin Haspelmath (eds), The world atlas of language structures online. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology.
Broß, Michael. 1988. Materialen zur Sprache der Ndam von Dik (Republik Tschad): Untersuchungen zur Phonologie und Morphologie. Marburg: Philipps-Universität. (MA thesis.)
Dayley, Jon P. 1989. Tümpisa (Panamint) Shoshone grammar. (University of California Publications in Linguistics, 115.) Berkeley: University of California Press.
Dryer, Matthew S. 2013. Order of adposition and noun phrase. In Matthew S. Dryer & Martin Haspelmath (eds), The world atlas of language structures online. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology.
Holisky, Dee Ann & Gagua, Rusudan. 1994. Tsova-Tush (Batsbi). In Rieks Smeets (ed.), North East Caucasian languages. Part 2, 147–212. Delmar: Caravan Books.
Kibebe, Tsehay Taye. 2015. Documentation and grammatical description of Chabu. Addis Ababa: Addis Ababa University. (Doctoral dissertation.)
Luo, Yongxian. 2008. Zhuang. In Anthony V. N. Diller, Jerold A. Edmondson & Yongxian Luo (eds), The Tai-Kadai Languages, 317–377. London: Routledge.
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| 0 | absent | 1023 | |
| 1 | present | 1245 | |
| ? | Not known | 175 |
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