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For example, the prepositional phrase after midnight can be modified by adverb phrases such as shortly (shortly after midnight) or quite obviously (quite obviously after midnight). [ 14 ] : 643–645 A subset of adverb phrase modifiers of prepositions express degree and occur within prepositional phrases but not other phrasal categories.
The remaining part of the phrase is called the prepositional complement, or sometimes the "object" of the preposition. In English and many other Indo-European languages it takes the form of a noun phrase, such as a noun, pronoun, or gerund, possibly with one or more modifiers. A prepositional phrase can function as an adjective or adverb.
The phrase formed by an adposition together with its complement is called an adpositional phrase (or prepositional phrase, postpositional phrase, etc.). Such a phrase can function as an adjective or as an adverb. A less common type of adposition is the circumposition, which consists of two parts that appear on each side of the complement.
Adjectives can be modified by a preceding adverb or adverb phrase, as in very warm, truly imposing, more than a little excited. Some can also be preceded by a noun or quantitative phrase, as in fat-free, two-meter-long. Complements following the adjective may include: prepositional phrases: proud of him, angry at the screen, keen on breeding toads;
(adverb in verb phrase) He was [very gentle]. (adverb in adjective phrase) She set it down [very gently]. (adverb in adverb phrase) [Even more] people were there. (adverb modifying a determiner) It ran [right up the tree]. (adverb modifying a prepositional phrase) [Only the dog] was saved. (adverb modifying a noun phrase) In some cases, noun ...
A prepositional adverb is a word – mainly a particle – which is very similar in its form to a preposition but functions as an adverb. Prepositional adverbs occur, for example, in English, German and Dutch. Unlike real prepositions, they occur mainly at the end of a phrase and not before nouns. They also modify the verb, which a preposition ...
An adjective phrase (or adjectival phrase) is a phrase whose head is an adjective.Almost any grammar or syntax textbook or dictionary of linguistics terminology defines the adjective phrase in a similar way, e.g. Kesner Bland (1996:499), Crystal (1996:9), Greenbaum (1996:288ff.), Haegeman and Guéron (1999:70f.), Brinton (2000:172f.), Jurafsky and Martin (2000:362).
For example, because martial is a postpositive adjective in the phrase court-martial, the plural is courts-martial, the suffix being attached to the noun rather than the adjective. This pattern holds for most postpositive adjectives, with the few exceptions reflecting overriding linguistic processes such as rebracketing .