Prepositions

This is the last chapter before you learn about verbs. Prepositions often go unnoticed, but are equally important as the other elements of grammar.

You’ve learned what nouns are. You’ve learned how to refer to earlier nouns. Most of those were pronouns, used for referring to people or groups of people.

But grammar is about word order and combinations. We can’t just throw all nouns into a blender and expect it to mean something. We need a glue that connects the nouns. A glue that tells us how the different nouns are related.

There are, however, a lot of glue words. You should view this chapter as more of a reference. Don’t try to remember all of this now. Look back whenever you don’t know the specific word for something.

Prepositions are short words connecting two elements of a sentence.

Example of prepositions about place/position.

Type 1: Nouns

These connect nouns by saying how they relate to each other. (Remember pronouns are also a type of noun!)

For example, let’s say there’s a cow and a farm. We want to say where the cow is in relation to the farm.

What do we do? We use a preposition!

Example

The cow near the farm. (🐄 📏 🚜)

I keep repeating this, but prepositions help with being specific. Which is good.

We could just say “a cow”. But by adding “near the farm”, we now refer to a specific cow. And the other person knows where that cow is. A lot of information in little time.

Example

The guy next to the road eats an apple. (👨‍🌾 🛣️ 🍏)

The girls on their bike tell stories. (👧👧 🔛 🚴‍♀️ 📚)

I see two mice under the bed. (🐁🐁 ⬇️ 🛏️)

All these examples connect a noun (like “two mice”) with another noun (like “the bed”). This is a preposition. And it tells us how the two are connected.

At the end I provide a table with all prepositions. As I said: don’t memorize this, use it as a reference.

Type 2: Verb + object

Prepositions can also connect the verb and the object. (Not the subject!)

The words are the same. But here comes another oddity of English: it’s very particular about the combination of verb and preposition. I’ll explain that below.

We already know the verb is related to our object … but how is it related? A preposition answers this.

Example

The man walks. => The man walks to the store. (👨 ➡️ 🏪)

Example

The girl sits. => The girl sits on the bed. (👧 🔛 🛏️)

Some verbs accept all prepositions. But many come with only one or several required prepositions. Whichever you choose can completely change the meaning.

There’s no easy rule for this. You’ll learn this from reading a lot. Even native speakers often get their prepositions wrong.

Always check the combination of preposition and verb. Otherwise, your sentence might be completely wrong or attain some other (awkward) meaning.

Example

I am angry with you.
I am crazy about you.
I am jealous of you.

These expressions are very similar: you feel something intangible about another person. But they all use completely different prepositions.

In Dutch, all these expressions would just use the same preposition (“op”). But English wants to be special.

Remark

I do love the expression “angry with you”. It implies that being angry is something you do together. Like: we’re both angry at each other, we’re in this together. Which is weirdly poetic.

How do I know?

To check if something is a preposition, try placing it before the closet or the party in a sentence. (This is an old trick I learned and basically everyone in the Netherlands seems to know.)

Example

We talked about science => We talked about the party (must be a preposition ✔️)

We sat on the bench => We sat on the closet (must be a preposition ✔️)

Example

We talked, but softly => We talked, but the party (that doesn’t make sense ❌)

We sat like ducks => We sat like the party (that doesn’t make sense ❌)

A word like “but” is a conjunction. These will be taught near the end of the course: Compounds & Conjunctions.

Overview

Prepositions can be neatly grouped into three categories: time, place and movement

They are a “closed group”: no more prepositions will be added. (Nouns are very much “open”: we constantly invent new words, terminology and phrases.) It’s unlikely somebody invents a preposition we somehow failed to discover for thousands of years 😛