Marathi postpositions

Marathi Case Markers and Postpositions are most debated area of Marathi grammar for a long time. Unlike traditional Grammarians and native Pandits, Burgess (1854) treats both of the markers as Postpositions. He mentions that the "Native authors endeavour to make the declension of nouns in Marathi to confirm to that of Sanskrit. The result is unnecessary confusion in this regard to this subject" (Burgess 1854: Preface v). His radical and innovative work of that time has still not paid much attention. He points out that contemporary grammarians adopted and applied Sanskrit scheme of case terminations arbitrarily and unscientifically. Though Shaikh (1972) reviews Case Markers and Postpositions dichotomy from the first Marathi Grammar of William Carey (1805) to Arvind Mangalulkar's (1964) publication, his review ignores studies like Kelkar (1959) and Fillmore (1968) of the time. The present paper discusses the recent Marathi Grammars, Pandharipande (1997) and Dhongde & Wali (2009). I argue that Marathi Postpositions should include case markers. Gajendragadkar (1969) also echoed this view. The paper reviews the topic in the light of current studies. Keywords: Marathi Postpositions, Case Marking in Marathi, Case Markers and Postpositions Dichotomy, Grammatical and Semantic Relations, Multifunctionality of Adpositions, etc.