English Grammar: Preposition

In this page, I will introduce a concept for prepositions different from what textbooks for English learners and dictionaries. Though the concept is not known well, it is popular in linguistics [citation needed]. The idea was introduced in The Philosophy of Grammar

Prepositions traditionally understood

• With NP as complement
• Prepositions can inflect in some rare cases (e.g. near)
• Prepositions can function as:
  a complement of be, a lexical verb, or a noun
  a modifier of a noun
  an adjunct

Extending the category

Though the traditional understanding looks like fine, it can be extended to be consistent with the definition of verbs.

Prepositions may have complements as verbs do:

• NP as complement
• clause as complement, which was understood as for conjuctions
• no complement, which was understood as for adverbs

The new concept of preposition is no longer _pre_position!

New prepositions

Here some new prepositions for example:

1. Prepositions that don’t normally take complements: here, abroad, etc.
2. Prepositions that take clauses as complements: because, although, etc.
3. Prepositions that take PPs as complements: because, ahead, etc.

Grammaticized use of prepositions

Prepositions can be required syntactically, but a tiny number of other individual words are only used for grammatical purposes.

Prepositions v.s. adjectives

The status of small number of words such as worth and like are anomalous. However, the majority of prepositions and adjectives have the followin difference:

• Adjectives don’t license NP complements; many prepositions do.
• Many adjectives inflect; prepositions do not.
• Most adjectives are gradable with words such as very, but some of them do not work for prepositions in general.
• AdjP as adjunct needs a predicand, but PP as adjunct doesn’t.
• AdjP can be a complement for become; PP often does not.

Prepositions v.s. adverbs

Some of what were considered as adverbs are prepositions which don’t need a complement. It allows to limit “adverb” to a modifer of a verb, adjective, or adverb.

See A Students’ Introduction to English Grammar, page 130-132 for other various reasons.

Prepositions v.s. subordinates

We should call what is called subordinating conjuctions subordinates. Because the category of prepositions is extended, there should be few subordinates (e.g. that, to, whether, and if).

Prepositions v.s. verbs

Gerand-participles and past-participles can be prepositions.

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