Prepositions and their usage in english teaching

PREPOSITIONS AND THEIR USAGE IN ENGLISH TEACHING. Prepositions have not been much studied in traditional lexical semantics The play a very important role in semantics and have many connections with most of the other syntactic categories. They have been studied in linguistics, psycho-linguistict According to their meaning prepositions may be classified as general, which can be used almost with any noun (in, at, on, by, etc). They may be called as special which may be used only with certain semantic groups of words. They are divided into «temporal» prepositions denoting time: before, after, during, since, till enc «local» prepositions denoting place: across, along, in front of, behind, indicating where something is, and directional, indicating where something is going «casual prepositions-because, due to, owing to. Prepositions as well as postposition do not perform any independent function in the sentence. A preposition denotes the relation between objects and phenomena, 1 postposition is part of a composite verb. One should remember that a preposition is not usually stressed, while a postposition is usually pronounced with an accent. Ex: Whom are you looking for? Your status in a society depends on your ability and behaviour. Your duly iso look after the ill man. One may say thhat prepositions show the relation of one notion to another do their job to formulare sensible communication, a preposition may joun the relation between): Two nouns (or pronouns), as I saw the flower in the garden. A verb and a noun adverbially, as Thomas bought a new book. Most prepositions can be grouped into two classes: locative (prepositions of place), indicating where something is, and directional, indicating where something is going.Locative prepositions modify a noun or noun phrase by specifying the location is. Prepositions function in the following three main syntactic situations: as heads of prepositional phrases , as an element in verbal compounds ( e.g.tum out,give up, as introducing small clauses). When dealing with prepositions, it is usually divided into semantically full and semantically empty prepositions. Semantically empty prepositions are prepositions which are strongly bound by A predicative head, like preposition on', in the example:»John relies on his father.» Where preposition 'on' cannot be substituted by a semantically close preposition like 'in'or 'over'. They are considered to be case markers by sonte approaches. These prepositions are lexically predicted by the predicative head therefore, they do not contribute to the semantics of the sentences, they disappear as Jexical nodes and their lexical value is encoded as an attribute of the predicative head. This indicates that, they are not translated, but are generated in the target language from the information encoded in the entry of the predicative head. Semantically full prepositions on the contrary, are heads of prepositional phrases. Full prepositional phrases may function as : adjuncts which weakly bound by a predicative governor, like 'on': The book lies on the table where 'on' can be substituted by a semantically close preposition, because the predicate demands a locative complement and not a specific preposition. As modifiers: «Jack works for his father.», where the prepositional phrase is not particularly predicted by the verb, and the semantics it conveys may apply to other verbs as well: Jack (bakes a cake, fixes the TV set for his father ). There are 2 major rules when it comes to the use of prepositions. The first major rule deals with preposition choice. Certain prepositions must follow certain words, and the correct preposition must be used to make relationships between words in the sentences clear. He second major rule deals with the prepositions place in the sentence. Prepositions must be followed by nouns, and prepositions can only go on the end of the sentence in certain situations. Determining th correct preposition to use can be a tricky proposition. This can be especially difficul when dealing with idioms- expressions in the English anguage that require the se ofa certain word, simply because that is the word we have chosen to use. Idioqiatic expressions aro expressions you just have o memorize, and when errors are made, they are almost always preposition erors Here re some examples ofNdioms, along with the correct prepositions Able lo, Capable of, Preoccopied with, Concemed hy Prohibitod rom, de in accordance with,clc ach of the italicized words are he only acceptable prepositions to follow thee , It would not be grammatically korrect to say «able with» or «capable tions must always be follawed by a noun or pronoun That doun e ohjeot of the preposition A velh ean'tbe the object ofl' a prepoi e was for the dog This is colrect-the preposition for is followed by the noun «dog».
This rule may seem confusing at first, because you may have seen words that look like verbs following the preposition to in sentences; for example: 1 like to ski or These boots are for skiing. However, in these examples, the ski and skiing are not actually acting as verbs In the first example, to ski is part of the infinitive. An infinitive is NOT a verb. An infinitive occurs when a verb is used as a noun, adjective, or adverb. Here, 'to ski» is a THING that the person likes doing, not an action that they are doung His a verbal noun. In the second example, skiing is a gerund. Like an infinitive, a gerund is NOT a verb, but is instead a noun, adjective or adverb. Here, «skiing» is a thing th the boots are for. No one in this sentence is doing the action of skiing Because prepositions must be followed by a noun and have an object usually shouldn't be used at the end of a sentence, For example, it is not corm The table is where I put my books on. However, there are certain circumstances where it is acceptable to sentence with a preposition. These exceptions exist where the preposition extraneous. In other words, the preposition needs to be there, and if it wasn't meaning of the sentence Kould change. In the above example, «The table is where I put my books on «the use of e proposition «on» isn't necessaky, We could take the «on» out of the sentence and meanirg would be the same So, the use of the preposition was extraneous unnecessary and we don't need it However, here is an example where it is perfectly acceptable to k preposition to end a sentence «1 turned the TV on».If you removed the «on» from the end of this sentence, it would change the meaning.Instead of switching on the set, you would be saying that you tumed the TV itself.