Prepositional Phrases

The Forms of Prepositions and Prepositional Phrases

It should not have been a great difficulty to locate most of the prepositions above.  It is interesting to look closely at the morphology of the prepositions, however.  Prepositions can be one word alone, a one-word compound word, or a multiple word compound word.  The compound words written with a space between each part of the compound will have been the most difficult to identify.  In fact, it is possible to identify greater sublevels of structure in the preposition in spite of, but to do so does not provide greater assistance in understanding prepositions in general, nor does it make the form easier to teach.  On the contrary, it becomes less easy to teach.  Therefore, we can say that in and on are one-word prepositions, into and onto are prepositions that are compound words, and because of and in spite of are also prepositions that are compound words; these compound words are simply spelled with spaces still between the words.  We could hyphenate them or write them all together, as is done with into and onto, but we simply don’t.

Other than the compound prepositions, these words are again fairly easy for most native speakers to pick out in a sentence.  The reason that it is so easy to locate them is that prepositions are a closed category of words: we don’t invent new prepositions the same way we invent new nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs.  This means that a native speaker most likely already knows every single preposition in English.

While it isn’t particularly difficult to locate most prepositions in a sentence, it is extremely hard to define a preposition by itself.  The same reason we don’t invent new prepositions all the time is also the same reason we don’t have an easy time defining what a preposition is; prepositions carry more grammatical information than meaningful information, much like the auxiliaries, another closed category of words in English (that is, we don’t invent new auxiliary verbs).  As a result, it makes more sense, (that is, it is more meaningful) to consider prepositional phrases rather than prepositions alone.  For those who want a definition, though, the following is one that is sometimes used in grammar books: a preposition is a word that shows a relationship to a noun.

Even the definition above points to a noun because it is the phrase level that carries the most meaning.  Therefore, one of the first steps to take is to identify the structure of a prepositional phrase.  In all the sentences above, we can see that the preposition is followed by a noun phrase that seems to complete it.  If we try to just stop talking at the preposition, the listener will feel we haven’t finished talking yet, and will be on pins and needles until we finish the phrase.  This is why there is a prescriptive rule saying “never end a sentence with a preposition.”  To do so is to leave your listeners or readers dangling.  Therefore, the basic structure of a prepositional phrase is a preposition followed by a noun phrase, which is called the object of the preposition.

Activity 11.2: The Meanings of Prepositions

Exercise 3: Click on each sentence below to add or remove a prepositional phrase. Type into the Your Answer box a brief explanation of what meaning each phrase adds to the sentence. Click on Answer to view the recommended meaning.

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