PREPOSITIONAL PHRASES

What is a Preposition?
A preposition expresses a relation between two entities, one being that represented by the
prepositional complement.
a book on the table
Types of relationship:
a. Place c. Instrument
b. Time d. Cause

Types of Prepositions
1. Postposed: With this type, complements of the preposition often either stand first in the
clause, or they are absent.
WH – questions: Which house did you leave it at?
Relative clauses: The old house which I talk about is empty.
WH – clauses: What I am convinced of is that the world’s population is booming to an
unforeseen extent.
Exclamations: What a mess he’s got into!
Passives: She was brought up by those wolves.
Infinitives: She is impossible to work with. (to-inf without subject)
2. Simple: -The most common type of English prepositions
- Consist of only 1 word: At, in, for, about, on, by, near, from, with, into, under, behind, over,
between, beside, above/ below, towards/ backwards...
3. Complex
- Consist of more than 1 word
- Fall into different categories:
+ Adverb/ Prep + Prep: along with, as for, away from, next to, out of, up to, opposite to…
+ Verb/ Adjective/ Conjunction + Prep: owing to, due to, because of, irrespective to, prior to,
but for …
+ Prep + Noun + Prep: by means of, by reasons of, in comparison with, in front of, in
accordance with/ to, on account of, in place of, to sum up, in case of, on behalf of, in the light
of, in order to, in spite of...

Prepositional Phrase
PRE-MOD. HEAD POST-MOD.
Right at the beginning of the story, you can feel the atmosphere
of the Western life.
Structure of a Prepositional Phrase (PP)
Head: Simple or Complex
Pre - Modifiers: Adverbs (Normally intensifiers of degree & measure, often with
prepositions of Time & Place)
He had wondered right off the path.
Now their footsteps could be heard directly above my head.
🡪 intensifier can be understood to modify the whole PP or just the
preposition alone.
Post modifiers:
NP: We played there for the whole day.
Ing – clauses: He is interested in reading Harry Potter.
Finite clauses: I am thinking of where we will go for the holiday.
Adverbs (intensifiers): Few people are against public ownership completely. 🡪 modify the
phrase as a whole.

Syntactic Funtions of PP
1. Adjunct
2. Disjunct/Conjunct

3. Post-Modifier of NP

4. Complementation of V/Adv

IV. Review of Phrases

What are the little boys doing over there?
Pron. aux art. Adj.P N V Prep. Adv.
P. P
O = NP S = NP V = VP A = P. P
Analyze each of the following sentences into clause elements (SVOCA)
26.She reads whatever colourful books she has.
27.All of the ten students gave the wrong answers.
28.She has never seen such a beautiful long white Christian wedding dress.
29.There is some badly needed conclusion to the story we’ve read.
30.She owns half of the ten famous best-sold novels.
31.He wished she would meet a better person than him
32.We had such a lot of homework that we couldn’t finish it that night.
33.Frequent check-ups at the doctor can drastically reduce the chances of suffering from
problems related to diabetes.
34.I think it is a pity that LB is the only major corporation I have worked for where this has
been a problem.
35.This is the very dog that chased the cat that scared the mouse that ate the malt that lay in
the house that Jack built.