Core Grammar #5: Prepositions

Prepositions—the little linking words

When a person begins learning English (either as an infant or as a second-language speaker), the names (nouns) come first: ball, milk, outside. Then come the big concrete verbs: throw ball, drink milk, go outside. After that, we learn something about sentence structure: I throw the ball. Babies drink milk. Do you want to go outside?

The little function words are the last ones we learn, and they are the most difficult because they are often abstract and idiomatic. (And misuse of the little words is what marks a person as a foreigner to a language.) Prepositions are in this class of small function words:

• Do not throw the ball inside the house.
• Drink your milk from your cup while you are at the table.
• I went through the screen door to go outside.

Preposition difficulties are the reason sentences like these seem off-balance and awkward, even though we can figure out what they mean:

• This has been a successful class of achieving its goals.
• I have started to gain an appreciation to poetry.
• The language of the story plays a role on how effective it will be.

Problem #1: there are a lot of them

This website claims that English has over 150 prepositions and something like 70 are the "common ones." You would probably go insane if you were required to memorize 70 little words and their usage.

Problem #2: usage is often abstract and idiomatic

The root meaning often relates to location (thus, the "position" part of the name), as shown by this cute website showing a puppy in different places. One textbook shows a huge block of cheese and mice in different prepositional relations to it (inside, beside, on, under, and so forth).

The problem, though, is that some prepositional relationships are difficult to visualize, so the "location" idea becomes very unhelpful: The children climbed the mountain without fear. That's an abstract concept, not something you can take a photo of.

Preposition usage is often idiomatic (just the way we do it, but it's difficult to explain logically). Fouling up an idiomatic usage is not always fatal to your meaning, but it does brand you as an outsider to the language group you are trying to speak to. Here are several possibilities to show what I mean (the red ones don't work):

• The unfit parenting of Waldo on his children was tragic.
• The unfit parenting of Waldo at his children was tragic.
• The unfit parenting of Waldo to his children was tragic.
• The unfit parenting of Waldo into his children was tragic.
• The unfit parenting of Waldo for his children was tragic.
• The unfit parenting of Waldo by his children was tragic. (Clearly wrong because it reversed the relationship.)
• The unfit parenting of Waldo concerning his children was tragic. (OK, but stiff.)
• The unfit parenting of Waldo regarding his children was tragic. (Another stiff one.)
• The unfit parenting of Waldo toward his children was tragic. (I am still not too happy with this.)

Problem #3: cell phones and Twitter

You probably saw that one coming. If all of your reading and writing is on Twitter, you get used to a 280 character limit; cell phones are more limited at 160. Obviously, you don't have space for the little words that do not carry heavy meaning (but only define relationships), and text/Twitter is incredibly concrete, so abstract relationships just do not fit there. Cell phone style has been leaking into school writing for some time. Here is a quotation¹ from a school paper submitted by a Scottish girl:

My smmr hols wr CWOT. B4, we used 2go2 NY 2C my bro, his GF & thr 3 :- kids FTF. ILNY, it's a gr8 plc.

Obviously, if you are immersed in that sort of writing, the little words get lost.

Dealing with the Problems

1. Actually read well-edited material such as the assignments for this course. And by "read," I do not mean the desperate last-second scan that might help you pass the daily reading quiz. I don't mean asking your roommate to explain the content either. You need to interact with the text itself.
2. Become aware of the way your target audience uses language. If my mother was ill, I might say "she was in the hospital." Someone from England would be more likely to say his mother "was in hospital" (leaving out "the"). Is one of us wrong? No, but we are in different language groups. You are trying to learn how to fit in with the "smart club" of academic and business writers and speakers, so try to imitate their usage.
3. When you write, read your copy aloud. If it sounds weird and awkward, chances are the little words are causing trouble. Sometimes your best repair is to simply do a new sentence—a one-word change might not be enough. The real repair for the Waldo sentence might best be: "Waldo's unfit parenting of his children was tragic."
4. You may have to do more surgery than simply trading out words. An even better rewrite of the sentences above might be "The unfit parenting of the children by Waldo was tragic."

More information:

• Prepositions: Locators in Time and Place, a web page from Capital Community College Foundation. (Note: The "Unnecessary Prepositions" section at the bottom is especially valuable. Those extra prepositions tend to be status markers that say the speaker is on a lower, less-educated level.)

¹ Translation (as if you needed it!): "My summer holidays were a complete waste of time. Before, we used to go to New York to see my brother, his girlfriend, and their three cute kids in person (face to face). I love New York. It's a great place."
This quotation is from: "Is TXT Ruining the English Language?" Have Your Say, BBC News, 6 Mar. 2003, news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/talking_point/2815461.stm. Accessed 17 July 2022.

The views and opinions expressed in this page are strictly those of the page author.

The contents of this page have not been reviewed or approved by Ashland University.

Revised 7/17/22 • Page author: Curtis Allen • e-mail: callen@ashland.edu.