There are only three simple deictic prepositions: achter'behind', naast'next to', and voor'in front of'. In addition to these simple prepositions, there are two phrasal prepositions: links van'to the left of' and rechts van'to the right of'. These prepositions denote vectors with a magnitude greater than 0, that is, it is implied that there is no physical contact between the reference object and the located object.

preposition	deictic	inherent	absolute	null vector
achter 'behind'	+	+	—	—
naast 'next to'	+	+	—	—
voor 'in front of'	+	+	—	—
links van 'to the left of'	+	+	—	—
rechts van 'to the right of'	+	+	—	—

The prepositions in Table 14 can all be used inherently as well, so that their use may give rise to ambiguity between the deictic and the inherent reading. This is illustrated in Figure 9 for the prepositions achter and voor in (181): the A figures represent the deictic use with the speaker as the anchoring point, and the B figures represent the inherent interpretations.

It is important to stress that the use of the notion “reading” implies that there is nothing in the prepositions achter and voor themselves or the construction that they are used in that determines whether we are dealing a deictic or an inherent reading; the intended interpretation depends on the perspective and intentions of the speaker, cf. Grabowski & Weiß (1995), Levelt (1996) and Beliën (2014). The same holds for the preposition naast'next to' in (182a), which is ambiguous in the same way as achter and voor, but in addition denotes two separate regions, which are opposite to each other. Due to the ambiguity between the deictic and the inherent reading, (182a) is therefore consistent with Jan being in one of the four positions indicated in Figure 10A&B. As is shown in Figure 11, the phrasal prepositions links van and rechts van in (182b) only refer to a subset of these positions.

      The deictic interpretation of the prepositions achter'behind' and voor'in front of' becomes impossible as soon as they are combined with prepositions such as aan'on', in'in', or op'on', which can only be used inherently; cf. Section 1.3.1.2.3. This is illustrated in (183) for achter/voor, which can only be used to refer to the A situations in Figure 12. Section 3.1.3 will argue that achterop and voorop are probably compounds. For completeness' sake, note that aan/op/in cannot be combined with naast'next to': cf. *naastaan *naastop, *naastin.

      The examples in (184), finally, show that the PPs headed by the deictic prepositions in Table 14 can be used both to indicate a location, as in (184a), and a change of location, as in (184b).