1. Preliminaries

1.0. Introduction

Halliday (1961) once used a term 'cline'

to explain the origin and development of certain

linguistic forms such as prepositions. "From the

point of view of change. forms do not snift abruptly

from one category to another. but go through a series

of gradual transitions. transitions that tend to be

similar in type across languages. For example. a

lexical noun like .~. that expresses a'body part

comes to stand for a spatial relationship in '~nLat

the back o~·. and is susceptible to becoming an

adverb. and perhaps eventually a preposition and even

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a case affix. Forms comparable to -back of (the house)'

in English recur allover the world in different

languages. The progression from lexical noun. to

relational phrase. to adverb and preposition. and

perhaps even to a case affix. is an example of what

we mean by a cline. d (Hopper and Traugott. 1997 : 6)

Again. we have a cover term 'adposition'

for prepositions and postpositions (Ibid •• 107 ;

Anderson. 1997). Adpositions playa vital role in

different languages. In English. for example. the

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prepositions have different roles. "There is a

problem with treating these prepositions as gramma-:

tical markers. because there are many different

prepositions. so that. if prepositions in general are

taken to be markers of grammatical roles. there would

be a different role for each preposition". (Palmer.

1994 : 8)

1.1. The Mean~ng and Nature of Preposition

The word 'preposition' is derived from the

Latin word • praepositio ''the-loan translation of Greek

• Prothesis'. which literally means • set before'. A

• preposition' (pre + position) appears to be anyth.ing

that is placed before. ego :

On the table, in the room.

!.!: t he bank. under that tree. etc. --But. in English. there are examples. that show prepoSi­

tions placed at the end of a sentence. ego :

I have a house to live in.

What shall I mend it wi th ?

What did you do that ~ ?

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Regarding this varied use of preposition. Crystal's

opinion 1s that it is a matter of style : "Traditional

grammar books still teach us that sentences should

never be ended with prepositions, even though to do so

is quite normal in the spoken stage of educated people

•••••• It is largely a question of formality. Do yoU

see the man John '!as .. talkini..!:2? is a far more infor­

mal way of speaking than Do you see the man to whom

John was talking 1 The former is the one we should.

most of us use on the majority of occasions ; the latter

would sound artificial and pompous in every day conver­

sation. But it is the latter which is still taught as

the correct form in many text books." (Crystal, 1990 :

23). That is, prepositions are by origin not free items

as are other lexical words, viz. nouns, pronouns, verbs,

etc. Hall (1969 : 209) puts it as follows:

i't In most Indo-European languages, prepoSitions

are phrasally bound forms, since the only place they OCCU]

is introducing a relation -- axis phrase. In English.

they are dH~least partly free, as shown by the fact that

they can occur at the end of a sentence 1n certain

constructions ('relative' and 'infinitival'). eg :

the firm I work for ; he's a 200d man to work for. I)

13

"English granunariane have condemned this

construction (as stated mockingly in the formulation.

"A preposition is a bad thing to end a sentence with")

but their objections rest on the obviously false

assumption that what is incorrect in Latin must ipso

facto be incorrect in English." (Hall. ibid.)

Robins (1976 : 218) also underlines the

same chacteristics of prepositions as unique and some

have no alternative forms at all :

" . . . . . . . . sentences ending with a preposition. though

frowned on by pedants. are very common 1 where hav~ you

c;ome frOlU 1 is commoner than from where ,have you come?

and what are you at? and what ~. Y9u upto? have no

alternative forms at all."

The free nature of preposition does not.

however. make it meaningless since it has to function

as a 'relator'. without which the sentence would be un­

grammatical. i.e. unacceptable. ill-formed. and thereby

meaningless.

1~

The fact that prepositions are meaningful

per se ia not beyond d~spute but in practice no

linguistic element can be meaningful unless it i8 put

in a proper context. So prepositions are meaningful

in that they do have syntactic and semantic functions

by which we actually 'mean' something.

To conclude. prepositions are :

(a) bound linguistic elements. or at least partly

free elements ;

(b) indeclinables or invariables 1

(c) semantically important syntactic elements

(FilLmore 1968, Langendoen. 1970)

(d) relators (functors or function words).

(Gleason, 1976)

(e) 'directive particles' but 'impure markers'

(Hockett. 1973 : 192)

(f) heads of prepositional phrases

(cf. Matthews. 1981 : 162)

(9 ) essential parts of a phrase of mutually 1

dependent constituents 1

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2 (h) 8uostitutables for adverbs.

-----------------------------------------------------1 • In a sentence like :

Old Sam sunbathed ~side a !tream.

The whole underlined phrase can be omitted. but not

part of it. "It appears that 'beside' depends on

the presence of 'a stream' and that 'a stream'

depends on the presence of f beside'. It is there­

fore a mutual dependency ••••• in this case, 'beside'

requires the presence of a phrase like 'a stream' to

complete its meaning. 'a stream' is said to

~~MPLEMENT 'beside', which itself is described as

a GOVERNOR of 'a stream'.

(Burton-Roberts, 1990 : 40-41)

2. Thus among English invariables some words

(eg., at, with. from) precede nouns to form groups

substitutable for adverbs( Words like quickly.

~. often. etc .). Thus, he carne with seeed, he came

quick~ . I !: will discuss it at supper ; we will

disCUSS it then; he comes fro~ London. he comes

often • (Robins, 1976 : 218) .

(i) those linguistic elements that generally take

(direct)objecta just like verbs do. Emonds

(1976 , 172) writes :

tI Among the traditional • parts of speech'.

only verbs and prepositions generally take (direct)

'objects'. But some verbs take no objects, others

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take only sentence or infinitive (s) complements and

others take various combinations of ¢' NP and.S. If

we extend these properties of verbs to prepositions.

the traditional 'prepositions' are TRANSITIVE prepo­

sitions, the heads of prepositional PHRASES : certa~n

traditional 'subordinating conjunctions' are preposi­

tions with sentence complements. the heads of preposi­

tional CLAUSES: and certain traditional simple adverbs

(of those not derived from adjectives) are INTRANSITIVE

prepositions. M For example -

He was surprised at me.

He was surprised at his remark.

He was surprised at what he said.

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The concept of 'prepoSition' emerges from

the placement of different nouns together to show their

relationships with one-another and with the verb-phrase

of the sentence. The presence of a verb is as the con-

troller of the action or state. Actually, tlwho did

" what, when, where, how, why, and to whom 1 might be

said to have given rise to different prepositions as

relaters. Thus, prepoSitions are deep-structure elements

as Langendoen rightly concludes :

....... prepoSitions are constituents of

every deep-structure arguments and that whenever a pre-

position fails to turn up in a surface-structure argument

it has been transformally deleted." (Langendoen, 1969 :

102)

This is proved by several instances in

English (and in other languages as well) eg. -

(a) we stayed there (for) three months.

(b) The snowy weather lasted (for) the whole time

we were there.

(c) we stayed there all week.

(Quirk et al 1990 : 157)

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This deep-rooted position of prepositions

shows that prepositions being relators establish rela­

tionships between entities, events, states. In other

words, they are those grammatical functors that con­

textualise every phrase used before or after them.

(cf. Nida and Taber. 1972 : 127). Furthermore, pre­

positions specify the meaning of the object (of. F~re,

1984 s 141-142).

1.3. 'pre~siti~n)as a Se~ant1co-Slntaotic Component

From what has been discussed earlier, it is

now clear that prepositions are semantically important

syntactic elements, i.e. they are semantico-syntactic

in that they not only affect the structure of a sentence

but also they play a vital role in structuring the meaning

of the sentence.

Fillmore (1968) has propagated his case

theory saying that the case-relationships are "sementi­

cally relevant syntactic relationships involving nouns

and the structure that contains them." For each of the

case-relations, viz. agentive. objective, dative.

instrumental, etc.. he provides categorical reali~

zation as noun-phrases :

Case ~ K + NP

Where 'K' stands for case-forms of noun-

phrases in surface-structure~ signalled through

suppletion. affixation. and presence of pre- and

post-positions. The. nature of 'K' depends on the

case-category 1 for example, the typical 'K' for

objective, according to Fillmore, is '¢'; for dative

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it is 'to' 1 and agentive it is 'by' (Liefri.nk, 1973

13) ..

That preposi.tions are components of

semantico-syntactic categories, means that no less

than a sentence can bear the features. such as locative.

instrumental and so on.. The sentence as an arrangement

of a verb plus arguments also testifies this view in

that no component of it is meaningful in isolation.

(cf .. Liefrink. 1973).. So. it is concluded that "the

preposition associated with each argument contributes

certain feature-specifications to that argument and that SpOci[icd1i(1I1s a~ alro im~ 101 jh. vtt"br wJ",'ch SlZIe.ct.Jt..A.t.

these~argument. Thus a verb like 'dissolve' imposes one

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of its arguments, say the specification (+ Locative),

a specification which is marked by the preposition~~)

associated with that argument." (Langendoen. 1969 :

104) •

The semantico-syntactic nature of prepo-

sition ia further attested by the fact that :

(a) The use of a particular preposition changes the

meaning. eg :

He reached on time. -He reached in time. -

(b) The absence or misuse of a preposition makes the

construction ungrammatical, e9 :

* I go school.

I met with him. *

The deep-structure o£ a sentence has to

fulfil both semantic as well as syntactic requirements

(tradionally known as case-relations) and since prepo­

sitions are deep-structure elements, "every role in

deep-structures of English sentences is accompanied

----~~~------------------~--~----------------~--------

* Sentences marked with • *. are

ungrammatical.

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by a preposition of its own ••••• This prepo8ition is

deleted if the role is made into the subject or direct

object of the sentence.·' (Langendoen, 1970 : 84)

Langendoen shows in this following table

that the same role may be introduced by a variety of

prepositions and the same prepositions may be used to

introduce many roles (cf. Verma. 1973 : 44) :

Correlation of Roles with pre~~itions

ROLE

Agent

Patient

I:nstrwnent

Cause

Result

Stimulus

Goal

Location

Movement

PREPOSITION ,

by

of, to

with. by

by

to, in, into

of, to, by

to

in. at, on, near. around,

beyond

into, onto. to. toward,

from, through, across

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"That is to say. prepositions contrast very

much more sharply with one-another than do articles. For

this reason they have a much greater part in signaling

meaning. If (Gleason. 1976 : 158)

1.4. Classification of pre~tions

preposi tions per se are used with other parts

of speech and thus make phrases as part of the sentence.

'However" they may be classified into different categories

according to how they are used and what they are meant

for (not what they 'mean'). Thus prepositions. being

phrasal and sentential elements, are restricted structu­

rally and semantically. Therefore, they may be classifiec

from the structural and semantic view-points.

1.4.1. Structural Classification

Structurally, prepoSitions are grouped under

the following types :

(a)

(b)

(c)

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Simple prepositions

about as down past with

above at except round

across before for since

after behind from through

against below in till

along beneath like to

amid beside near toward

amidst besides of towards

among between off under

amongst beyond on untill

around by over via

with

ComE2und prepositions (Prep. + Prep. )

alongwith out of

into upon

nearby within

onto without

* Complex prepositions (or Phrasal prepositions)

--------------------------------------------------------* The list of prepositions of this type is an

adapted version of Seidl and McMordie (1982).

(1 ) Prep. + Noun -+- PreE.

at peace with

by force of

by order of

by virtue of

for bear of

from want of

in addition to

in aid of

in anticipation of

in charge of

in compliance with

in conjunction with

in consideration of

in contrast with

in exchange for

in favour with

in lieu of

in mistake for

in obedience -to

in place of

in persuit of

in regard to

in remembrance of

by dint of

by means of

by reason of

by way of

·for want of

in accordance with

in agreement with

in asnwer to

in case of

in combination with

in conflict with

in connection with

in contrast to

in deference of

in favour of

in honour of

in memory of

in need of

in peril of

in proportion to

in recognition of

in relation to

in response to

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(ii)

1n roturn for

1n !light of

1n support of

in token of

in want of

prep_ + definite

at the cost of

at the point of

at the risk of

at the time of

for the benefit

article

of

for (the) love of

for the sake of

in the custody of

in the form of

in the hope of

in the wake of

on the chance of

on the part of

on the pretence of

on the strength of

to the left of

in search of

in spite of

in time of

in view of

+ noun + preE-

at the expense of

at the rate of

at the sight of

by the help of

for the good of

for the purpose of

in the couse of

in the event of

in the habit of

in the matter of

on the basis of

on the occasion of

on the left of

on the right of

to the joy of

to the right of

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to the satisfaction of

with the help of

with the intention of

(11i) Adverb + preposition

along with

as for

away from

together with

(iv) Conjunction + prep.

except for

but for

(d) Participial Prepositions

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to the surprise of

with the hope of

under the pretence of

apart from

as to

out-of

such as

because of

These prepositions are actually present

participles in form but they are used as prepositions

(Bhanot and Martin). ego :

concerning

during

owing

permitting

considering

not with standing

pending

regarding

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1.4.2. Semantic Classification

Regardless of the fact that prepositions are

relators or functors, they do have some meaning unlike

other lexical words, viz. noun, pronouns, adjectives.

verbs, etc.

Broadly, prepositions may be classified

according to what they denote when used with different

nominals. as follows (cf. Quirk et al, 1990)

(1) place When prepositions are used with a nominal.

denoting a place. they express different meanings. eg. :

(a) Positive Positions and Directions -

at. to. in, on, etc.

(b) Negative Positions and Directions -

away, from, of, out of, etc.

(c) Relative positions -

by, near. under, below. above. etc.

(2 ) ~ - The temporal attitude of prepositions can be

had from their collocation with temporal nouns, eg. . . (a) point of time at, since

(b) period of time in, within

(c) day on

Cd) duration for

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(3 ) purpose/cause for, because of

(4 ) Goal Recipient, Target for, to, at

(5 ) Source. or~2!a from

(6) Means, Instrument by, with -(7 ) Subject-matte~ about, on

• • •