Лекции по теоретической грамматике английского языка для студентов

 
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The preposition is traditionally defined as a word expressing relations 
between words in the sentence. The weakness of the traditional definition is that it 
does not allow us to distinguish prepositions from subordinating conjunctions. 
Cf. She never saw him after the concert. vs. She never saw him after he left 
town. 
In traditional analysis, the preposition is used with the noun phrase, not with 
the verb phrase. Such being the case, 
after
 in the first sentence is a preposition, 
while 
after
 in the second sentence is a conjunction. In other words, the status of 
after
 is determined by the linguistic status of the following phrase. Accepting this 
approach, we shall have to treat the two uses of 
after
 as homonyms. 
A new approach to prepositions and subordinating conjunctions is to treat 
the two traditional categories as prepositions (Geoffrey K. Pullum and Rodney 
Huddleston, 2002: 600). The said scholars include in the preposition category all of 
the subordinating conjunctions of traditional grammar with the exception of 
whether
 and 
that
. Prepositions are taken as heads of phrases and are comparable to 
verbs, nouns, adjectives, and adverbs which also function as heads. This approach 
to prepositions makes it possible to combine prepositions and subordinating 
conjunctions into one class and thus solve the problem of the discrimination of 
prepositions and conjunctions.  
Sometimes the boundary line between a preposition and another part of 
speech is not quite clear. Thus, with reference to the words like 
near
 there may be 
doubtful cases from this viewpoint. For instance, there certainly is the adjective 
near
, used in such phrases as 
the near future
. On the other hand, there is the 
preposition 
near
, found in such sentences as 
They live near me
. 
Functionally, prepositions can be divided into grammatical, and non-
grammatical (the latter are subdivided into spatial and non-spatial).  
Grammatical prepositions have no identifiable meaning independent of the 
grammatical construction in which they occur. Consider:  
1. He was interviewed by the police. 
2. They were discussing the speech of the President.  

 
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3. She sent the letter to John. 
In all these examples the prepositions have no identifiable meaning of their 
own: it is only in the co-text that we can say what meaning they express. In (1) by 
marks the element that is the Agent; in (2) of marks the possessive relationship 
between the speech and the president; in (3) to marks the Recipient.  
In their grammatical functions, prepositions are similar to inflections in 
synthetic languages.  
Cf. interviewed by the police: 
допрошены
 
полицией
;  
the speech of the President: 
речь
 
президента
;  
sent to John: 
отправила
 
Джону
. 
As already indicated, non-grammatical prepositions can be divided into 
spatial and non-spatial, the term spatial including two types of space: non-temporal 
and temporal. Spatial non-temporal prepositions mark the position of entities with 
respect to each other: one entity is treated as a reference point (the deictic centre) 
with respect to which another is located.  
Morphological features 
Structurally, prepositions fall into two categories: simple, or one-word, 
prepositions (in, on, for, to, about, after, etc.) and composite, or two- or threeword, 
prepositions (ahead of, because of, according to; by means of, at the cost of, with 
reference to, etc.). 
However, not all scholars recognize the existence of composite prepositions. 
According to Prof. Ilyish, we cannot term these groups prepositions, since a 
preposition is a word, not a word group, and it is essential to keep up the 
distinction between words and word groups. The term "compound preposition" is 
too vague and is not conducive to a clear and consistent grammatical theory. 
Syntactic features  
As far as phrases are concerned, the function of prepositions is to connect 
words with each other. On the sentence level: a preposition is never a part of a 
sentence by itself; it enters the part of sentence whose main centre is the following 
noun, or pronoun, or gerund. It won’t be correct to say that prepositions connect 

 
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parts of a sentence. They do not do that, as they stand within a part of the sentence, 
not between two parts. 
 

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