Postposer

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A linguistic element, such as a postposition, that is placed after the word or phrase it governs or modifies in a sentence
2. In grammar, something that comes after the item it relates to, the way a postposition follows its noun in languages like Japanese
3. A word functioning as a postposition, positioned after rather than before the noun or pronoun it connects within a clause

Etymology: Grammarians needed a word for elements that go after the words they modify, and "postposer" is built from the same parts as "preposition." The prefix comes from Latin "post," meaning "after," and the verb "pose" in its older sense of "to put or place" comes from Old French "poser." That French verb traces back to Late Latin "pausare," meaning "to pause or rest," so the "put" sense grew out of "stop" by a roundabout route. English later associated the verb with Latin "ponere," "to put," which is why it looks like it belongs to that family. The suffix "-er" turns the verb into a noun for the thing doing the action, so a postposer is an item that postposes. The term is specialized, used mainly in grammatical description of languages where particles or affixes follow their head words, and I am not certain of its first recorded date in English.