This article describes the use of prepositions and postpositions in Latvian grammar

Latvian grammar

The Latvian language is a moderately inflected language, with complex nominal and verbal morphology. Word order is relatively free, but the unmarked order is SVO. Latvian has pre-nominal adjectives and both prepositions and postpositions...

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The lists below are organized according to the case

Grammatical case

In grammar, the case of a noun or pronoun is an inflectional form that indicates its grammatical function in a phrase, clause, or sentence. For example, a pronoun may play the role of subject , of direct object , or of possessor...

 of the noun phrase

Noun phrase

In grammar, a noun phrase, nominal phrase, or nominal group is a phrase based on a noun, pronoun, or other noun-like word optionally accompanied by modifiers such as adjectives....

 following the preposition. In the plural, however, all prepositions in Latvian can be described as governing the dative case. For example:

• singular: bez manis/*man "without me-gen/*me-dat"
• plural: bez mums/*mūsu "without us-dat/*us-gen"

Genitive case

• aiz - behind
• apakš - under
• bez - without
• iekš - in
• iz – from, out of
• kopš - since
• no – from
• pēc - after
• pie - at
• pirms - before
• priekš - for
• uz - on (location) [governs accusative with different meaning, see below]
• virs - above, over
• zem - under

Spatial prepositions containing the element -pus:

• ārpus - beside, out of
• iekšpus - inside
• lejpus - below
• otrpus - across, beyond, on the other side (of), over
• šaipus - on this side (of)
• viņpus - in other side
• virspus - above, on

Accusative case

• ap - around, about, ca.
• ar - with
• caur - through
• gar - along
• pa - by [governs dative with different meaning, see below]
• pār - over, across
• par - about
• pret - against
• starp - between
• uz - to, towards [governs genitive with different meaning, see above]

Dative case

• līdz – until
• pa - in, on [governs accusative with different meaning, see above]

Latvian has also some adverbs, known as pusprievārdi "semi-prepositions", which can be used like prepositions or postpositions, in combination with a dative noun phrase:

• cauri - through
• garām - past, over, by
• iepretim - in front of
• līdzi - with
• pāri - over, across
• pretī - in front of, against

Postpositions

The following postpositions govern the genitive case, in both singular and plural:

• dēļ - through, of, for
• labad - for, for the sake of
• pēc - because of