Prepositions Kuiper and Allan Chapter 2.1.6

Inflection? Prepositions do not inflect in English.

Identifying prepositions Prepositions indicate relationships. –primarily in time and space –They relate something to something else, e.g. something is in, on, under etc something else. e.g. by, with, for, behind, below, between, of etc They are a closed class, meaning you can’t make up new ones.

Exercise Identify the prepositions in the following phrases –the statue by the rotunda –the disappearance of the cash –the circuit for mountain bikes –skating on the lake

Other non-inflecting grammatical categories There are other closed classes of words which do not inflect. We will meet those when we look at sentence structure.

Exercise Identify the grammatical category of each underlined word in the following sentence: –Joanna's pink Ducati completed the journey from Malmö to Ravenna in just under two days.