A Summary of Prepositions

In this section, we learned all about the preposition, whose primary role in life is to stick nouns on sentences. We met three basic kinds: simple, marginal, and compound. We learned that skilled writers don’t use too many compound prepositions like with respect to, in regard to, prior to, and pursuant to.

We learned that the preposition, when it sticks a noun on a sentence, forms a structure called the prepositional phrase. The noun stuck on the sentence is the object of the preposition. And if you stick a personal pronoun on a sentence with a preposition, that pronoun must appear in the objective case.

The noun sticking to a preposition might be a true noun, a noun phrase, or a noun clause.

And we learned that a preposition is often a good word to end a sentence with.

Finally, we learned that words serving as prepositions can often serve as other parts of speech as well. They can act as adverbs and subordinating conjunctions. And they can join with a verb to form a complement verb, also called a phrasal verb.

 

Previous: The “Like” Word

Next: The Last Part of Speech - The Interjection