Four North Saami Ambipositionshttps://doi.org/10.18710/S5SXRGJanda, Laura A.Antonsen, LeneBaal, Berit Anne BalsDataverseNO2014-11-302023-09-28T20:22:26ZWe present a study of four North Sámi adpositions that can be used as both prepositions and postpositions and thus be termed “ambipositions”. We advance three hypotheses concerning 1) dialectal differences in use of ambipositions in North Sámi, 2) differences between their use as prepositions and postpositions, and 3) a possible typological correlation between the frequency of ambipositions and the extent to which position is used to differentiate meaning, with North Sámi at the high end of this scale. Our study tests these hypotheses against two databases representing the use of ambipositions in newspapers and in literature.The data consists of example sentences tagged for the position of the adposition, the meaning of the adposition and the source of the sentence. Chi-square tests are used to show where there are significant differences between the prepositional and postpositional uses and between uses in the eastern, central, and western portions of the North Saami dialect continuum.Arts and HumanitiesNorth Saamichi-squarepolysemytypologyEnglishAntonsen, Lene, Laura A. Janda, and Berit Anne Bals Baal. 2012. “Njealji davvisámi adposišuvnna geavahus” [“The Use of Four North Saami Adpositions”], Sámi dieđalaš áigečála 2012, v. 2. 32pp. Available at: http://site.uit.no/aigecala/sda-2-2012-antonsen-ja-janda-ja-baal/, url, https://site.uit.no/aigecala/sda-2-2012-antonsen-ja-janda-ja-baal/, https://site.uit.no/aigecala/sda-2-2012-antonsen-ja-janda-ja-baal/Janda, Laura A., Lene Antonsen, and Berit Anne Bals Baal. 2014. “A Radial Category Profiling Analysis of North Sámi Ambipositions”. High Desert Linguistics Society Proceedings, Volume 10. Available at: https://hdl.handle.net/10037/6673, 11 pp., handle, 10037/6673, https://hdl.handle.net/10037/667320122014-09-25corpusSápmiNorwaySwedenFinlandNorthern ScandinaviaCC0 1.0