19 Sentence Structure: Prepositions

Prepositions

A preposition shows the relationship between a noun or pronoun (a word naming a person, place, or thing) and some other word in the sentence

Monkeys swing________the trees

Any word that easily fits in the blank is a preposition since such a word shows the relationship between the trees and the swinging.

Monkeys swing through the trees.
Monkeys swing between the trees.
Monkeys swing among the trees.
Monkeys swing above the trees.
Monkeys swing around the trees.

 

Prepositional Phrases

A prepositional phrase can be very short or very long. All prepositional phrases begin with a word that is a preposition and end with a noun or a pronoun (a word naming a person, place, or thing).

Prepositional phrases will begin with one of these words:

Watch out! The words in blue are only SOMETIMES prepositions: as, but, and for are prepositions when they are not functioning as conjunctions;  to is a preposition when it is not functioning as part of an infinitive verb. For example, the sentence “I went to the store” contains a prepositional phrase (to the store), but “He wants to store his car in our garage” does NOT contain a prepositional phrase because “to”  is part of the infinitive verb “to store”.

Tip: The most common prepositional word in the English language is the preposition of. If you see the word of in a sentence, you are definitely looking at a prepositional phrase.

 

Why do you need to identify prepositional phrases?

When you have a lot of prepositional phrases in a sentence, it may be difficult to find the simple subject and main verb and to decide if the sentence is actually complete and correct.

Tip: The simple subject or the main verb(s) is never in a prepositional phrase.

Things, people, or places mentioned in prepositional phrases cannot be the subject. Therefore, if you can spot prepositional phrases, which describe something in the sentence, you will know where NOT to look for the simple subject or main verb(s).

All the prepositional phrases are crossed out in the following sentences:

Consider this sentence:

The Board of Governors of the College meets in the conference room beside the administrative wing on the second floor.

Now look at the sentence with the prepositional phrases crossed out:

The Board of Governors of the College meets in the conference room beside the administrative wing on the second floor.

Suddenly, it is much easier to see that the subject is “The Board of Governors” and the verb is “meets” because these are the only words not crossed out!

 

Watch this video to review prepositions and prepositional phrases:[1]

 

Learning Check

In the following sentences, determine if the bolded phrases are prepositional phrases.

  1. Shannon, D. (2021, April 8). Prepositions [Video]. YouTube. https://youtu.be/lHuQbkzXUZ8 ↵

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