About prepositions and prepositional phrases



About prepositions and prepositional phrases

Prepositions are sometimes called function words in English. They are generally small words that in conjunction with their objects communicate important temporal, spatial and logical ideas such as:

1. Location

He teaches in room 105.

2. Time

He teaches at 3:10.

3. Direction

He walked into Room 105.

Prepositions work with Noun Phrases to form important grammatical structures in sentences. A prepositional phrase consists of a preposition and its object – a noun phrase. The noun phrase can have multiple modifiers as well.

Prepositional phrases essentially serve as either adjective modifiers or adverbial modifiers. Adjective modifiers and adverbial modifiers have a communicative intent.

Adjective modifiers answer important questions about nouns and adjectives such as (a non-exclusive list) Which (one)? or What? How many? How much? To what degree?

Adverbial modifiers answer important questions about adverbs such as (a non-exclusive list) Where? When? Why? How? How often/long etc.?

Directions: Circle the prepositions in this piece. Bracket the noun phrase that constitutes the object of each preposition. Decide on the communicative intent of each prepositional phrase: is it an adjective? If so, which noun does is modify? Which question does it answer? Is it an adverb? If so, which verb does it modify? Which question does it answer?

True Irish

Timothy Egan (NYT, March 12)

For a time, Gaelic was the common language in the mining warrens beneath Butte, Mont., and by the dawn of the 20th century the city had a higher percentage of Irish than any other city in America – including Boston.

Butte was a hard-edged, dirty, dangerous town on the crest of the Continental Divide, and if a single man lived to his 30th birthday he was considered lucky. Yet entire parishes left the emerald desperation of County Cork for the copper mines of Butte. They fleed a land where British occupiers had once banned education, and where famine had killed a million people in seven years’ time.

We are about to enter a long weekend of excess in celebration of all things Irish. The diaspora is remarkable, in part, for its numbers: a tiny island nation with a population now of 4 million has produced the second-largest ethnic group in the United States — 36 million who trace their primary ancestry to the old sod, according to a 2006 Census report. Both Senators Barack Obama (or is it O’Bama?) and John McCain have some Irish in them, each from his mother’s side.

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