The history of the idea of prepositions inEnglish grammar writing can be seen as one of relative stagnation, only exceptionally interrupted by certain more influential authors...
It was only in the second half of the twentieth century that the situation radically changed and since then, grammarians have introduced scientifically precise definitions and developed detailed and elaborate frameworks for their description.
His definition follows:A part of speech properly used prepositively, that is governing an accusative case set next after it (except sometime in verse it is set after his casual word) as, I go to the church: and is sometime postpositively used, that is, when it governeth the relative, that, or which, coming before a verb, whose governing preposition is set after such verb: as, this is the man whom we spoke of, or of whom we spoke; and is some time used in composition after a verb, but being severed from the verb by the adverb, not, or by an accusative case, may be said to be set in apposition adverbially.
"[11] And in 1784, John Hunter argued in much more detail, in a paper presented to the Royal Society of Edinburgh in its first year, that neither conjunctions nor adverbs were in all cases usefully distinguished from prepositions in English (or in Latin and Greek).
He stressed that classifications were being based on the "merely accidental" differences in what constituent (if any) happened to follow the word.
The rational analysis is to treat after as simply a preposition governing (optionally) a complement that can be either a noun phrase or a clause.
[12]: 25–38 In 1924, Otto Jespersen developed these ideas, pointing out that prepositions were the only lexical category defined by the type of complement.
Jespersen also noted that many words, such as before in I came before, which were categorized as adverbs, were very similar in meaning and syntax to prepositions (e.g., I came before you.).
He therefore proposed that all these words are prepositions, and that the requirement that they be followed by a noun phrase be dropped.
It refers to a restricted subset of what are classified as subordinating conjunctions in traditional grammar.
But since at least Jespersen (see § History of the concept in English) most modern grammarians distinguish these two categories based on whether they add meaning to the sentence or are purely functional.
[14]: 216 For example, convert the energy of ocean waves into electricity becomes the conversion [of the energy of ocean waves] into electricity, where the underlined NP – which is the object in the PP headed by of – is the oblique argument of conversion.
[14]: 602 Traditional grammars of English characterize prepositions as words that take objects in the form of noun phrases.
[19]: 658–659 An exception to this rule about case seems to occur when the preposition takes a coordinated pair of objects, such as someone and I.
[17]: 153–158 These finite clause complements can be declarative (this happened after Stacy left) or interrogative (they ignored the question of whether it was ethical).
[17]: 158–160 PPs typically function as adjuncts in clauses, verb phrases, NPs, and AdjPs.
[14]: 646 Prepositions may function as particles, a kind of dependent in a VP that may, unusually, come between a verb and an object.
In linguistics, subcategorization is the "assignment of a lexical item to a subclass of its part of speech, especially with respect to the syntactic elements with which it can combine.".
Modern descriptive grammars have tended to extend the category of complex prepositions, and there is accordingly some variation in dictionary practice, depending on how far they are influenced by such work.
In the example above, the PP with whom is not in its usual position inside the VP after the head verb.
[16]: 137 Merriam-Webster stated on Twitter in July 2020 and on Instagram in February 2024 that it was acceptable, after centuries of people saying this should not happen.
[2] Prepositions like in and at typically denote locations in space (e.g., I live in Toronto) and time (e.g., I arrived in January).
[14]: 257 Prepositions like to and from typically denote the beginning or end point of a path in space (e.g., I went from Ottawa to Toronto) and time (e.g., I lived there from 1992 to 2003).
[14]: 257 Prepositions like through and over typically denote the course of a path in space (e.g., I went over the hill) and time (e.g., I lived there through the 1990s).
Given that English prepositions hardly ever inflect, discussion of their morphology is generally limited to word formation.
English prepositions are formed through both derivation and compounding, and some carry inflectional morphology associated with other parts of speech.
For example, some English prepositions derive from non-finite verb forms and still carry the associated inflectional affixes.
The prepositions barring and concerning, for example, contain the -ing suffix of present participle verb forms.
Similarly, the prepositions given and granted contain, respectively, the -en and -ed suffixes of past participle verb forms.
[19]: 669–670 The prepositions near and far are unusual in that they seem to inflect for comparison, a feature typically limited to adjectives and adverbs in English.