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 Scottish Gaelic word roimhe (/rɔʲə/) is an inflected preposition meaning "before him"; it would not be grammatical to say *ro e.

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.

In Cornish, for example, the inflected forms of the preposition gans (with) are genev (with me), genes (with you, singular), ganso (with him), gensi (with her), genen (with us), genowgh (with you, plural), and gansans or gansa (with them).

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