1367260110.5528Understanding Syntax

64Understanding syntaxhas combined with a noun phrase to form a preposition phrase (PP). Perhaps themost typical role of prepositions is to mark locative and temporal informationin a language – that is, information concerning location and time. In English,prepositions such as under, over, into, on (top of), beside, towards, in (front of) marklocation, while prepositions such as before, during, after, while, until and since marktemporal information: before the meeting, during the war, until four o’clock. Manyprepositions express either kind of meaning: after the game, after the traffic lights;over the bridge, over the summer. Prepositions also express the manner in which anevent is carried out: with a knife, by means of poison, in a loud voice, and so on. Thereare also metaphorical uses of prepositions: compare against the kerb (spatial) andagainst my better judgement.In terms of function, many PPs are optional modifiers of verbs, as in We left[before the meeting], She sang [in a loud voice] – the PPs are in brackets. In thisgrammatical function, a PP is an adjunct, as we saw in Section 2.5: an optional,modifying phrase.Now let’s start to identify the preposition class in English. Just like nouns, adjectivesand adverbs in English, prepositions pair up with their own special set of modifiers:these are straight, right, well and just, and we can also add the more restrictedmodifier bang. All of these (underlined) immediately precede the prepositions (inbold) in (81):(81) The weight is well/just inside the limit.We were bang on target/on time.She pushed the box well/right/straight/just under the bed.Go straight/right to the top of the stairs!The library is just/right by/beside the town hall.Although the ability to take these modifiers is a good test for preposition statusin English, it does need to be used with caution, because some of the modifierscan occur with word classes other than prepositions (e.g. just fine, where fine is anadjective). Also, not all prepositions work with all of these modifiers, most oftenbecause their meanings are not compatible. A final note of caution is that the purelygrammatical preposition of, as in the top of the stairs, cannot take a modifier either.The modifiers do, however, enable us to identify various other words as prepositionswhen we might otherwise not have been sure of their word class.First, let’s consider words like afterwards and nearby. As we will see, these can beclassified as intransitive prepositions. So far, the prepositions we’ve seen were usedtransitively: they take an object NP. Examples are inside the limit, on time, under thebed, where the prepositional objects are underlined. Though most prepositions aretransitive, a number can be used either transitively or intransitively, i.e. withoutan object; examples are inside, over, before, as in That student was here before (theothers), and underneath, as in Put your case underneath (the bed). The prepositionsafterwards and nearby differ only in that they are always intransitive: