Prepositions

Introduction

When I arrived at their house, the big dog, which was called Rover, was barking loudly because it was lonely.

There are about 60 prepositions in English, and these are the most common, in order of frequency.

of, in, to, with, as, at, for, on, by, from.

A preposition normally links part of the sentence (“the modified part“) to a noun or noun phrase, which is called the object of the preposition.

modified part preposition object
a joke about the weather
snowed after Christmas
arrived at their house

One of the peculiarities of English is called preposition stranding:

Which house did you arrive at?

I wonder what they’re laughing about.

In these examples the preposition’s object has been moved forward to the front of the clause This is quite common and you should be able to recognise that at and about are prepositions, in spite of the position of their object.

 

Preposition or conjunction?

Prepositions link part of a sentence to a noun or noun-phrase (the preposition’s object).

A letter came for you.

He wrote to all their friends.

Some words can be used either as prepositions or as conjunctions which link part of a sentence to a finite clause.

She arrived before supper. (preposition)

She arrived before he gave us the message. (conjunction)

What relationships do prepositions show?

 

 

place

at, on, in, inside, within, by, near, behind, beyond, among, between, above, below, beneath, over, under to, towards, from, into, out (of), off, onto, across, along, down, past, round, through
time

at, on, in, during, for, after, before, by, since, till, throughout, until

 reason

because of, despite, for
similarity

as, like, unlike, than

 addition

with, without
means

by, with

 

Which preposition should be used?

Some prepositions have different meanings according to their context:

a teller of jokes of = produces
a book of recipes of = contains
a book of Dad’s of = belongs to

Some words demand particular prepositions, which are fairly arbitrary:

depend on cope with tired of
long for reason for angry at
live on marriage to averse to
battle against or with trouble with bored with

 

Self-assessment for prepositions

[2016 note: unfortunately the links no longer work, but you may find the exercise useful even without the answers.]

Find the prepositions in this passage from ‘The Bell Jar’ by Sylvia Plath. Beware of underlined decoys.

… finally I came to a story about a fig-tree. This fig-tree grew on a green lawn between the house of a Jewish man and a convent, and the Jewish man and a beautiful dark nun kept meeting at the tree to pick the ripe figs, until one day they saw an egg hatching in a bird’s nest on a branch of the tree …

Now look at the highlighted prepositions and decide what each one modifies and what its object is.

… finally I came to a story about a fig-tree. This fig-tree grew on a green lawn between the house of a Jewish man and a convent, and the Jewish man and a beautiful dark nun kept meeting at the tree to pick the ripe figs, until one day they saw an egg hatching in a bird’s nest on a branch of the tree …

 

 

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