Why Do Some Languages Use Postpositions?

If you’re an English speaker, the phrase “in the box” feels completely natural. The word in, a preposition, comes before the noun it modifies, “the box”. It’s a simple, foundational rule we learn without thinking. But what if you were to say “the box in”? It sounds strange, maybe even poetic or Yoda-like, but certainly not standard English.

Yet, for speakers of billions of people worldwide, this “backward” structure is the norm. In languages like Japanese, Turkish, Korean, and Hindi, you don’t put things in a box; you put them box-in. These languages don’t use prepositions; they use postpositions.

This isn’t just a random, quirky difference. The choice between placing a word before or after a noun is a clue to a much deeper, more fundamental aspect of a language’s architecture. It’s a single thread in a vast, interconnected web of syntax, and pulling on it reveals a beautiful, underlying logic that governs how a language is built.

Heads, Complements, and a Language’s Blueprint

To understand the preposition vs. postposition split, we need to introduce a core linguistic concept: the head of a phrase. In any phrase, the head is the word that determines the phrase’s essential character. Everything else in the phrase either modifies or completes the head. This “everything else” is often called the complement.

Let’s look at English:

• In the phrase in the house, the preposition in is the head. It establishes that the phrase is about location. “The house” is its complement.
• In the verb phrase ate the apple, the verb ate is the head. It establishes the action. “The apple” is the complement (the object).
• In the noun phrase the king of England, the noun king is the head. “Of England” is the complement that specifies which king.

Notice a pattern? In English, the head consistently comes before its complement. This makes English a predominantly head-initial language. Because we are a head-initial language, it feels natural for our adpositions (the umbrella term for prepositions and postpositions) to come first. Hence, pre-positions.

The Head-Final Symphony: Where Postpositions Feel Right at Home

So, what about languages with postpositions? You guessed it. They are typically head-final languages. In these languages, the head of a phrase consistently comes after its complement. This structural preference is most obvious in their basic sentence order.

English is an SVO language: Subject-Verb-Object.

The cat (S) ate (V) the fish (O).
The verb (the head of the predicate) comes before its object (the complement).

Many languages with postpositions, like Japanese and Turkish, are SOV: Subject-Object-Verb.

Japanese: 猫が魚を食べた (Neko ga sakana o tabeta)

Cat (S) fish (O) ate (V).
Here, the verb tabeta (ate) comes at the very end of the clause, after its object. It is head-final.

This fundamental “Object-Verb” order sets a powerful precedent for the rest of the grammar. If the verb comes after its object, it creates a powerful tendency for other heads to come after their complements, too. This is why postpositions feel so natural in an SOV language. The noun is the complement, and the adposition is the head that gives the phrase its function.

Let’s see this in action:

Japanese

To say “in the box” in Japanese, you say 箱の中に (hako no naka ni).

• hako: box (the complement)
• no naka ni: in / inside of (the postpositional phrase, which acts as the head)

The structure is “box in”, a perfect mirror of the “fish ate” structure. It’s complement-first, head-last.

Turkish

Turkish follows the same logic. To say “in the house”, you say evin içinde.

• evin: of the house (the complement)
• içinde: in / inside (the postposition, the head)

Again, the pattern holds: Complement + Head. It’s a direct consequence of Turkish being a staunchly SOV, head-final language.

A Cascade of Consistency

This head-initial vs. head-final distinction doesn’t just stop at verbs and adpositions. It cascades through the entire grammar, creating two distinct but internally consistent “types” of languages. Once you know whether a language uses prepositions or postpositions, you can make an educated guess about many of its other features.

Let’s compare English (Head-Initial) with Japanese (Head-Final):

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1. Adpositions

• English (Prepositions): The head (in) comes before the complement (the box). → in the box
• Japanese (Postpositions): The complement (hako) comes before the head (ni). → hako ni (箱に)

2. Possession (Genitives)

• English: The head noun (the mother) comes before the possessor phrase (of the child). → the mother of the child
• Japanese: The possessor (kodomo no) comes before the head noun (haha). → kodomo no haha (子供の母) (child’s mother)

3. Relative Clauses

• English: The head noun (the woman) comes before the modifying clause (who reads the book). → the woman who reads the book
• Japanese: The modifying clause (hon o yomu) comes before the head noun (josei). → hon o yomu josei (本を読む女性) (book reads woman)

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This remarkable consistency suggests a deep cognitive principle at play. Having a uniform direction for branching—either always head-first or always head-last—may make a language easier for the human brain to parse and for children to learn. It reduces the number of rules you need to store; you just need to know the language’s fundamental “direction”.

Are There Exceptions? Of Course!

Language is a living, evolving system, not a perfectly engineered machine. While this head-parameter principle (known as Universal 20 or the “Preposition/Postposition Universal”) is one of the strongest cross-linguistic tendencies, exceptions exist.

German, for instance, is famously mixed. It’s SVO in main clauses but SOV in subordinate clauses, yet it primarily uses prepositions. English itself, while overwhelmingly head-initial, has a few fossilized postpositions like in “three years ago” or “the whole night through“.

These exceptions don’t invalidate the pattern; they just show that languages are complex systems influenced by historical change, language contact, and other pressures.

Conclusion: A Different Kind of Logic

So, why do some languages use postpositions? Because it’s not an isolated choice. It’s the logical outcome of a deeper choice about where to place the “head”, or the most important element, in a phrase. Languages that put the verb at the end of a sentence (SOV) tend to follow that head-final pattern everywhere, resulting in possessor-possessed order, modifier-noun order, and, of course, noun-postposition order.

The next time you hear a phrase that sounds “backward”, remember that you’re not hearing a mistake. You’re hearing a different, but equally valid, system of logic—a glimpse into an alternative architectural plan for building meaning, one where the most important word is often saved for last.