Wednesday, January 25, 2012

Prepositions and Prepositional Phrases




A preposition is a word that relates a noun or a pronoun to some other word in the sentence.
The boy by the window is a dork.
The word by in the sentence above is a preposition.  By shows the relationship of the word boy to the noun window.

Here are some (45) commonly used prepositions:
about
before
during
off
to
above
behind
for
on
toward
across
below
from
onto
under
after
beneath
in
out
until
against
beside
inside
outside
up
along
between
into
over
upon
among
beyond
like
since
with
around
by
near
through
within
at
down
of
throughout
without

But wait, it gets even more complicated!  Some prepositions consist of more than one word…..uhg!           
Kate likes Sawyer instead of Jack!

Here are some (12) common compound prepositions:
according to
aside from
in front of
instead of
across from
because of
in place of
on account of
along with
far from
in spite of
on top of

Now…the moment you’ve been waiting for…..the REALLY tricky part: prepositional phrases!

A prepositional phrase is a group of words that begins with a preposition and ends with a noun or pronoun in the headword position, called the object of the preposition.  Prepositional phrases, as a whole unit, act like either an adjective or an adverb…..ai carumba!  The following three sentences each have two prepositional phrases.

The painting near you is by a Brazilian artist.

The dog across the street ran in front of the car.

The dork in front of you is really into grammar exercises.