A Guide To Learn English Language

Why prepo­si­tions are important?

Unfor­tu­nately, most of our early encoun­ters with writ­ten form of com­mu­ni­ca­tion is via Instant Mes­sag­ing or SMS ser­vices. These modes of com­mu­ni­ca­tion are essen­tially one to one form of online com­mu­ni­ca­tion. These forms of online com­mu­ni­ca­tions are pri­mar­ily per­sonal in nature. Offi­cial com­mu­ni­ca­tion calls for proper chan­nels of com­mu­ni­ca­tion fol­low­ing the rules of gram­mar. To achieve proper gram­mar, one has to iden­tify the basic parts of speech. Prepo­si­tions are one of the eight parts of speech.

What is a preposition?

Prepo­si­tions are link­ers. They link a groups of words. Nouns, pro­nouns and phrases to other parts in a sen­tence. Prepo­si­tions indi­cate the rela­tion between things in a sen­tence. A prepo­si­tion locates a noun and links it to the other part of the sen­tence. Sim­ply put, prepo­si­tion is a part of speech which intro­duces a prepo­si­tional phrase.
Let’s exam­ine some exam­ples:-
1) The cat sleeps on the sofa.
Here on is the prepo­si­tion and it intro­duces the prepo­si­tional phrase “the sofa”.
2) We drove to the store.
Here to is the prepo­si­tion and it intro­duces the prepo­si­tional phrase “the store”
Golden Rule:
Prepo­si­tion can only be fol­lowed by a noun or a sen­tence depend­ing upon the preposition.

Par­ti­cle and Prepositions

Prepo­si­tions do not alter the mean­ing of the verbs pre­ced­ing them. Par­ti­cles are phrasal verbs i.e. they are a part of the phrase.
Jack ran up the bill.
In this exam­ple, ran up is a phrase. Hence here up is a par­ti­cle.
Jack ran up the hill.
Here, up is used as a preposition.

Prepo­si­tion

Let’s exam­ine some of the con­fus­ing prepo­si­tions.
1) At/On/In
At prepo­si­tion is used to men­tion a par­tic­u­lar time. E.g. At mid­night.
On prepo­si­tion is used for cer­tain dates and days .E.g. On his anniver­sary.
In prepo­si­tion is used for period of time. E.g. In an year.

2) For/While/During/Since
For prepo­si­tion is used to express a period of time. E.g. I have been on this case for two years now.
While prepo­si­tion is used when more than one action is involved. E.g. The thief sneaked into their houses while they were holidaying.

Dur­ing prepo­si­tion is used to indi­cate the dura­tion of the action. E.g. He learnt gui­tar dur­ing his sum­mer vacation.

Since prepo­si­tion is used with a spe­cific date or time. E.g. They have been liv­ing here since 1990.

Some Com­mon Prepo­si­tions
• aboard
• about
• above
• across
• after
• against
• along
• amid
• among
• anti
• around
• as
• at
• before
• behind
• below
• beneath
• beside
• besides
• between
• beyond
• but
• by
• con­cern­ing
• con­sid­er­ing
• despite
• down
• dur­ing
• except
• except­ing
• exclud­ing
• fol­low­ing
• for
• from
• in
• inside
• into
• like
• minus
• near
• of
• off
• on
• onto
• oppo­site
• out­side
• over
• past
• per
• plus
• regard­ing
• round
• save
• since
• than
• through
• to
• toward
• towards
• under
• under­neath
• unlike
• until
• up
• upon
• ver­sus
• via
• with
• within
• without