Prepositions

This video is a short introduction to prepositions and their use in English. We will look at common prepositions, multiple and overlapping meanings, phrasal verbs, and tips for improving your understanding and use of prepositions.

Common prepositions

Prepositions are words that show the relationship between other parts of a sentence.  As you probably know, prepositions are words like in, from, of, for, and by. They are usually short words, but there are a few longer ones such as throughout, alongside, and regarding. There are also multi-word prepositions such as due to, in regards to, because of, apart from, and except for. In fact, there are over one hundred prepositions in English and you can find a complete list of them by searching in a good grammar book.

The easiest and most common prepositions refer to time or place.  You probably know these already. ‘At’, ‘on’, ‘in’ and ‘by’ are very common when referring to time, for example:

The assignment is due at 5pm on Wednesday.

The assignment is due by the tutorial in Week 6.

Prepositions can also refer to something’s location or movement. For example:

The teacher sat behind the desk.

The water flowed out of the tap.

There are many other types of prepositions that refer to a relationship between the elements of a sentence. Take a look at this example paragraph from an academic journal article. How many prepositions can you find?

The prepositions are now highlighted on the screen. As you can see, they are quite common.

Multiple and overlapping meanings

Prepositions can be challenging. One reason for this is because the same word often has several meanings or functions. For example, if look up the word by in your dictionary, you will see nine or more different definitions and examples, as per the examples on your screen.

The best way to learn all these different meanings is to see them used in context.

Another cause for confusion when using prepositions is that their meanings often overlap. When you compare the definitions of through with those of by, for example, you can see that some of the meanings are very similar. Which one to choose sometimes depends on its usage in the context. ‘Usage’ means the way we typically use language and often depends on common collocations such as the ones on your screen now. It is not necessarily about following grammatical rules.

Phrasal verbs

You may have noticed that verbs are often accompanied by prepositions. Some of these are referred to as ‘phrasal verbs’, such as:

wake up

hand in

take after

back out

put up with

You can find a list of phrasal verbs online or in a good grammar book. Phrasal verbs sometimes have a special meaning that is different from the meaning of the individual words by themselves. For example, even if you know the word ‘take’ and the word ‘after’, you would not be able to guess the special (or ‘idiomatic’) meaning of the phrasal verb ‘take after’, which means to resemble an older relative in appearance or character.

Another example is ‘look up’. Although this can literally mean to ‘look up’ (for example, ‘the girl looked up at the plane flying past’), it can also mean something quite different. If we say ‘I looked it up in the dictionary’, we are not literally looking upwards. In fact, ‘look up’ also means to search for something in a reference book. The verb ‘look’ actually has many phrasal verbs associated with it. Each one has a different meaning and some of them are not literal.

It is important to note that phrasal verbs are very common in spoken English but much less common in formal academic writing. In speech, we might say the phrasal verb ‘put up with’ but the verb ‘tolerate’ would be more appropriate in academic or professional writing. Likewise, we might say ‘hand in an assignment’, it might be better to write ‘submit an assignment’. Make sure you consider a text’s level of formality and context before you use a phrasal verb in your academic writing.

Tips

One rule that you do sometimes hear - and maybe you’ve learned it - was that you should never end a sentence with a preposition. This is a myth. In fact, it is acceptable—and common—to finish a sentence with a preposition as these examples show. Here is an example with the preposition in two different places. Both are perfectly correct and we could choose to use either of them.

So, now that we know prepositions can be used in a wide variety of circumstances, we can also see that there is not a set of easy grammar rules that you can learn for them. However, there are a few things that you can do that will improve your understanding of prepositions.

First, because usage and context is important, you should try to notice them in what you read and hear.

Secondly, when you find a preposition used in a way that you have not seen before, make a note of how it is used, its meaning in this context, and the words that it is used with. Then, try to use it again in the same way.

Lastly, buy a good English-only dictionary.  A good dictionary is essential to understanding how prepositions work. Translation dictionaries (that is, from your language to English) don’t always give enough information or enough examples.

This video has given you a short introduction to prepositions. Although prepositions can be tricky, awareness and practice will improve your use of them. Work through the other activities to give yourself some practice.