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English prepositions are words – such as of, in, on, at, from, etc. – that function as the head of a prepositional phrase, and most characteristically license a noun phrase object (e.g., in the water). [1] Semantically, they most typically denote relations in space and time. [2] Morphologically, they are usually simple and do not inflect. [1]
The following are single-word prepositions that take clauses as complements. Prepositions marked with an asterisk in this section can only take non-finite clauses as complements. Note that dictionaries and grammars informed by concepts from traditional grammar may categorize these conjunctive prepositions as subordinating conjunctions.
Prepositions form a closed word class, [28] although there are also certain phrases that serve as prepositions, such as in front of. A single preposition may have a variety of meanings, often including temporal, spatial and abstract. Many words that are prepositions can also serve as adverbs.
For example, in English, prepositions govern the objective (or accusative) case, and so do verbs. In German, prepositions can govern the genitive, dative, or accusative, and none of these cases are exclusively associated with prepositions. Sindhi is a language which can be said to have a postpositional case. Nominals in Sindhi can take a ...
In French, prepositions combine with disjunctive pronouns, which are also found in other syntactic contexts (see French disjunctive pronouns). In Portuguese, Spanish, Italian, and Romanian, prepositions generally combine with pronouns that are identical in form to nominative (subject) pronouns, but there are unique prepositional forms for the ...
In Koine Greek, for example, certain prepositions always take their objects in a certain case (e.g., ἐν always takes its object in the dative), while other prepositions may take their object in one of two or more cases, depending on the meaning of the preposition (e.g., διά takes its object in the genitive or the accusative, depending on ...
Preposition stranding or p-stranding is the syntactic construction in which a so-called stranded, hanging, or dangling preposition occurs somewhere other than immediately before its corresponding object; for example, at the end of a sentence.
Simple sentences in the Reed–Kellogg system are diagrammed according to these forms: The diagram of a simple sentence begins with a horizontal line called the base.The subject is written on the left, the predicate on the right, separated by a vertical bar that extends through the base.