Preposition

Prepositions in most Western languages precede their complements, that is, the nouns (or other words) that they govern. The prep + comp forms a prepositional phrase (PP), and the complement is usually a noun (NP, noun phrase, e.g. with her, in the restaurant), but other types are possible.

1. We met at the restaurant. (NP comp)
2. I regard that as inefficient. (Adj comp)
3. He emerged from under the car. (PP comp)
4. He didn’t arrive until after the meeting had begun. (clausal complement)
5. He was worrying about who he should confide in. (clausal comp. - relative clause)
6. He raised the question of why it had been concealed. (clausal complement)

Sometimes prepositions are optional i.e. they may be deleted with some temporal phases, especially in colloquial discourse.

1. We have lived here (for) a long time.
2. We’re going to Cheju (on) Friday.
3. I have lived in Seoul (for) two years.
4. I usually go to bed (at) midnight.

Sometimes preposition deletion (ø) is obligatory or strongly preferred (e.g., with determiners and similar modifiers).

1. Elmer will be busy ø next Friday
2. ?Elmer will be busy on next Friday.

1. Fritz stayed in Gyeongju ø all week.
2. *Fritz stayed in Gyeongju for all week

1 Etymological distinctions

Simple prepositions:	at, in, to, below ...
Compound prepositions:	into, onto, underneath
Complex prepositions:	aside from, in accordance with, with reference to, on the strength of
Derived from pres. participles:	concerning, considering, notwithstanding, regarding
Derived from past participles:	given, granted

2 Meaning & use

A preposition can sometimes indicate that NP prep. objects are understood as being relatively unaffected or less affected by the action encoded in the verb.

1. She kicked the dog.
2. She kicked at the dog.
3. They climbed up the mountain.
4. They climbed the mountain.
5. They fed us with junk food (but most of us didn’t eat it).
6. They fed us lots of vitamins. (from Dixon, 2005)

Prepositions are regularly borrowed and used in phrasal verbs, e.g., get over it. In this case, it may no longer be a true preposition syntactically, but a phrasal verb particle, and oftentimes, the meanings of the PVP as well as true prepositions can be rather metaphorical; see prepositional metaphors.

3 Other languages

Most Western languages use prepositions followed by nouns. One exception is Latin poetry, where a preposition might be placed after its noun complement for metrical reasons, or a adjective modifying the noun complement appears before the preposition. A few such expressions have come into English, e.g.:

magna cum laude = with high praise

summa cum laude = with highest praise

Another exception is the German entlang, which comes after the noun, and thus acts more like a postposition:

Er lief die Strasse entlang = He walked along the street.

Korean commonly uses postpositions, which attach to the end of nouns; e.g.,

한국어로 hangugeo-ro = in Korean

집에 jib-e at/to home.

Korean uses the general postposition -에 (at, in) for general locations, and often combines it with a more specific indicator for more specific meanings, e.g., 집안에 inside the house.

The syntactic term adposition can be used to describe both categories, prepositions and postpositions. Chinese often uses a combination of a general preposition and a more specific postposition.

zai zhuozi shang

LOC desk - on-top-of

= on the desk