Prepositions and their complements
Prepositional phrasesconsist of a preposition and the words which follow it (a complement). The complement (underlined below) is most commonly a noun phrase or pronoun, but it can also be, an adverb phrase (usually one of place or time), a verb in the -ingform or, less commonly, a prepositional phrase or awh-clause:
They first metata party.(preposition + noun phrase)
She was taken illduringthe film.(preposition + noun phrase)
Would you like to comewithmeplease?(preposition + pronoun)
Fromthere, it’ll take you about half an hour to our house.(preposition + adverb)
Untilquite recently, no one knew about his paintings.(preposition+ adverb phrase)
She’s decidedondoing a Chinese language course.(preposition + -ingclause)
Not: …decided on to do…
It’s a machineformaking ice-cream.(preposition + -ingclause)
If you can waituntilafter my meeting with Jack, we can talk then.(preposition + prepositional phrase)
We were really surprisedatwhat they wrote.(preposition +wh-clause)
We can put an adverb before a preposition to modify it. This applies mainly to prepositions of time or place which are gradable (above, before, far, deep, down, opposite):
They’ve movedfarintothe country.
They left the partyjustbeforeus.
You can’t miss it. His office isalmostoppositethe coffee machine.
Prepositional phrases after verbs
Prepositional phrases can be complements of verbs. If we need a special preposition to introduce the complement of the verb, we call such verbs ‘prepositional verbs’:
Do these keysbelong toyou?
We’re not happy but we doapprove oftheir decision.
We sometimes use an adverb particle before the preposition. The verb + adverb particle + preposition structure forms a verb which has a single meaning. We call such verbs ‘phrasal prepositional verbs’. Their meaning is often not related to the meaning of the original verb:
She reallylooks up toher grandfather.(admires)
We’re alllooking forward tohaving a few days’ holiday together.(anticipate with pleasure)
See also:
Verbs: multi-word verbs