Complex sentences

Combining prepositions and events to explain when, why, how, etc

If you don't know, prepositions are powerful little words like ‘in’, ‘out’, ‘of’, ‘to’, ‘about’ and many others that we use to add particular kinds of detail about events.

You can get all sorts of meanings from them:

  • Where something happens—“A dog chased squirrels at the park”.
  • When something happens—”We’ll finish the game in the morning”.
  • How long for—”I lived in the jungle for a whole month”.
  • Why—”I went to the jungle for a reality show”.
  • How, or by what means—”She made jelly with a packet mix”.
  • Who or what with—”She made jelly with her friends”.
  • In what way—”He said it in a playful way”.
  • And many more!

(For more detail about the meanings you can create with prepositions, check out the Prepositional Phrases lesson from the Word Groups course.)

Prepositional phrases usually combine preposition + ‘person’ or ‘thing’.

But we can also put events into prepositional phrases, which lets us create all sorts of other meanings.

For example, here's a snippet that expresses a range of time using preposition + noun group phrases:

All my summer holidays, from ages four to seventeen, were totally idyllic.

Notice how the times are 'things'. 

What happens if we swap them for 'events'?

All my summer holidays, from when I was four years old to when I was seventeen, were totally idyllic.

Boy(1984)

The meaning's the same, but it has a different, more personal flavour.

Write your own sentence that describes a range of time from one event to another event.

Let's look at 'giving a reason'.

The example below gives a 'thing' reason using a preposition + noun group:

He'd been sent there for his many crimes.

This one uses an ‘-ing’ clause to make an ongoing process the reason:

He'd been sent there for being a nuisance in Assembly.

Flour Babies(1992)
Write a similar sentence in which an ongoing process is the reason for something else happening.

One of the most common ways we use events in prepositional phrases is when we're describing how something happened.

For instance, this next snippet is from a passage describing how light works:

It's a little like how sound bounces off a wall.

"Seeing Eye to Eye."(2009)

The preposition ‘like’ creates a comparison, and the supporting clause, introduced by ‘how’, expresses this 'similar' manner.

Write a sentence explaining how something happens by comparing it to another process.

Here's one last example.

The preposition 'about' can be used to introduce a topic:

But he liked to rib me about where I was in the book.

Wonder(2012)

In this snippet:

  • The main clause is "But he liked to rib me".
  • The preposition "about" sets up a topic or focus for the ribbing.
  • The supporting clause "where I was in the book" details that focus as a place. 

We can use prepositional phrases with supporting clauses to add details about all sorts of events:

But he liked to tease me about catching the wrong bus home from school that one time.

But she often warned me about which animal I chose to pet at the farm.

But they turned a blind eye to how I always seemed to fall asleep during movies.

Write your own sentence that explains the topic or focus of one process in terms another process.
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