Prepositional phrases

Prepositions combine with noun groups to create what we call prepositional phrases.

Here's an example:

I could hear footsteps so I dived down and took another look under the van.

Burning for Revenge(1993)

The preposition is 'under' and the noun group is 'the van'.

The prepositional phrase is 'under the van'.

This phrase this tells us where the character was looking.

You could easily change both the preposition and the noun group to create different things to look at, or in, or under.

I could hear footsteps so I dived down and took another look inside the gym bag.

I could hear footsteps so I dived down and took another look from under the bed.

Note that the last example was an example of a multi-word preposition in action.

We have noun groups, verb groups, adjective groups, adverb groups... Why do we say prepositional phrase and not prepositional group?

The shortest answer is that prepositional phrases contain those other groups.

When we look at noun groups, verb groups, and the rest, we can break them down into components that are all unique to that type of group. For example, verb groups have tense helpers and modal verbs, noun groups have describers and quantifiers, and so on.

But a prepositional phrase is a preposition plus a noun group.

Since prepositional phrases don't have any unique components apart from the preposition, they're not a group in the way we mean the other word groups, and that's how we come to call them phrases.

We're going to spend a lot of time in this lesson writing different prepositional phrases, so we might as well get started now.

Here's a short list of common prepositions.

If you want a comprehensive list, check out Wikipedia's list of English prepositions.

One thing to always remember: often the same word can function in different ways depending on context. So when you see a list of prepositions, always remember that it's only a list of words that can function as prepositions in the right situation, not necessarily words that are and always will be prepositions.

Write your own variation about someone hearing footsteps and diving down—where do they look?

Heads up: prepositions don't only combine with noun groups

For the start of this lesson, our rule of thumb is going to be that prepositions combine with noun groups to make prepositional phrases, but heads up: this isn't 100% accurate.

Prepositions actually combine with 'things'—and not all things are noun groups. There are grammatical ways in which actions can become 'things', but we'll talk about these later.

For now, focus on the basic rule of preposition + noun group = prepositional phrase.

Now let's dive into the interesting part about prepositions: what kinds of meanings they can make.