Esperanto · Chapter 15 · Lesson 8 · Grammar primer
The tricky prepositions: je, po and direction
Je is the official wildcard, po modifies the number and not the noun, and en la domon means you MOVED. The prepositions that earn their own lesson.
The short version
Po is glued to the number, never to the people
Po shares an amount out. Tri infanoj ricevis du pomojn is two apples in total and presumably an argument; tri infanoj ricevis po du pomojn is six apples, two apiece. The rule that prevents every classic mistake: po modifies the number and nothing else, so po la infanoj is wrong, and if no numeral is in sight then po has no business in the sentence. Whether the noun then takes -n is a genuine hundred-year dispute: write po du pomojn, and mark nobody wrong.
La infanoj ricevis po du pomojn.
anstataŭ mi and anstataŭ min are not the same
The -n after anstataŭ and krom is not an ordinary preposition slip. It is a deliberate device for saying whose role was affected. Li skribis la leteron anstataŭ mi means in my place: the writing was my job. Ŝi invitis lin anstataŭ min means I am the one who went uninvited. Krom behaves identically, so mi vidis ĉiujn krom lin says he went unseen. Where the sentence has no object there is nothing to disambiguate, and plain ĉiuj krom mi is all you ever need.
Ŝi invitis lin anstataŭ min.
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