A postposition is a type of adposition, a grammatical particle that expresses some sort of relationship between a noun phrase (its object) and another part of the sentence; an adpositional phrase functions as an adjective or adverb. Postpositions are adpositions which follow their objects. The equivalent of the postposition in English is the preposition, which differs in that it precedes its object. In grammar, an adposition is a word or affix which shows a words grammatical function. ... In linguistics, the term particle is often employed as a useful catch-all lacking a strict definition. ... In linguistics, a noun phrase is a phrase whose Head is a noun. ... An adjective is a part of speech which modifies a noun, usually making its meaning more specific. ... An adverb is a part of speech that normally serves to modify verbs, adjectives, other adverbs, clauses, and sentences. ... The English language is a West Germanic language that originates in England. ... In grammar, a preposition is a type of adposition, a grammatical particle that establishes a relationship between an object (usually a noun phrase) and some other part of the sentence, often expressing a location in place or time. ...

Here are some examples of languages that use postpositions:

• Chinese: zhuōzi shàng (literally, "table top"; naturally, "on the table"), wūzi lǐ (literally, "room inside"; naturally, "in the room")
• Dutch: het huis in (literally, "the house into"; naturally, "into the house")
• Finnish: talon edessä ("house in front of"), talon takana ("house behind of")
• Georgian: shentvis ("for you") (in Georgian almost all postpositions are directly attached to the word)
• German: dir gegenüber ("you opposite"); ihr zuliebe ("her sake for"), ihm zufolge ("him according to"), die Straße entlang ("along or down the street")
• Hindi: kamre mẽ ("room in")
• Hungarian: kutya nélkül ("dog without")
• Japanese: doko ni ("where at"), doko e ("where to")
• Korean: Hanguk e ("Korea to")
• Turkish: evin önünde ("house in front of"), evin arkasında ("house behind of")

English has three common postpositions: "ago," "away," and "hence"; however, English also has a tendency to form postpositional compound words, such as "thereafter" and "wherein", a quality likely borrowed from Latin, a fellow prepositional language. Some English speakers also tend to use prepositions in a way that appear to be postpositions when their objects are interrogative pronouns, such as in "Where to?" or "What for?" However, this is not really postposition due to the wh-movement phenomenon that occurs in English, in which the preposition is actually modifying a trace that is left behind when the interrogative pronoun (the wh-word) is moved to the front of an interrogative sentence. Hindi (हिन्दी) is a language spoken in most states in northern and central India. ... Latin is the language that was originally spoken in the region around Rome called Latium. ... An interrogative pronoun (also known simply as an interrogative) is a pronoun used in asking questions. ... Wh-movement or wh-fronting is a syntactic phenomenon whereby interrogative words (sometimes called wh-words) appear at the beginning of an interrogative sentence. ... The word trace has several meanings: in linear algebra, the trace of a square matrix A is the sum of its main diagonal elements. ... A question is any of several kinds of linguistic expressions normally used by a questioner to request the presentation of information back to the questioner, in the form of an answer, by the audience. ...

There is a tendency for languages to be postpositional when the object of the verb precedes the verb in the unmarked sentences (especially the very common SOV order). However, this is only a tendency (Latin itself is typically SOV). The use of postpositions also correlates with the tendency to place adjectives before the noun they modify. In linguistics, the sentence is a unit of language, characterised in most languages by the presence of a finite verb. ... In linguistic typology, Subject Object Verb (SOV) is the general order of words in a languages sentences: Sam oranges ate. The SOV type is the most common type found in natural languages. ... An adjective is a part of speech which modifies a noun, usually making its meaning more specific. ...