This section provides a semantic classification of the adpositions. We distinguish the three main groups in (164). These three groups will be discussed in the sections indicated in parentheses, where we will further divide them into several subclasses.

This section also attempts to give a semantic characterization of the individual Dutch adpositions. However, in the absence of sufficiently detailed studies of the meanings of the individual prepositions, the description will sometimes be rough and imprecise, especially in the case of the non-spatial/temporal adpositions, and should therefore be regarded as no more than a first attempt. Note in particular that it is not our intention to provide a complete overview of the various meanings of the non-spatial/temporal uses of the adpositions, comparable to what can be found in e.g. Dixon (2021); we leave that to lexicographers and confine ourselves to what we believe to be the core cases that have syntactic relevance (like causative and agentive door-PPs, and instrumental and comitative met-PPs).