Prepositional Phrase - Academic Mode

Definition of prepositional phrase
The prepositional phrase is a group of words that comprise a preposition, its object, and an object modifier. In a longer sentence, this phrase modifies verbs, nouns, clauses, and phrases. a sentence, although it can also appear within another prepositional phrase. Since a preposition cannot stand alone, it needs a word to form a complete and coherent sentence. This word is called an object of a preposition.

For example, in the sentence, "I thought we all learn from experience, but some of us have to go to summer school" (The Tunnel of Love, by Peter De Vries), "experience", "we" and "school" are objects of prepositions, creating the propositional phrases.

Common examples of a prepositional phrase
The prepositional phrase functions as an adjective phrase, or as an adverb phrase, within a sentence.

er daughter.
Here, "con" is a preposition, and together with "with her" is a prepositional phrase, it serves as an adjective phrase.

I brought a white dog with black paws for her book.
Here the preposition “under” is grouped with the words “under the table” to create a preposition.

When she arrived at the airport, she rented a taxi.
“An “Is the preposition and, as Overall,“ to the airport ”is a preposition.

Examples of prepositional sentences in literature
Example 1: A hanging (by George Orwell)
“We walked out of the gallows courtyard, past the condemned cells with their prisoners waiting, into the large central courtyard of the prison. “

Orwell used two long prepositional clauses in this example. Both are a modifying noun "Galgenhof" which fulfills the function of a noun.

Example 2: Mr. Sammler's Planet (by Saul Bellow)
“Shortly after sunrise, or what would have been sunrise in a normal sky, Mr. Artur Sammler, with his thick eye, scanned the books and papers in his West Side room and firmly suspected that they were the wrong books, wrong papers. ”

In these lines, four prepositional phrases are underlined. Each phrase begins with a preposition - "after", "in", "with" or "of" - and ends with a preposition object.

Example # 3: Walden (by EB White)
“Early the next morning I started walking toward Walden, exited Main Street and down Thoreau, past the depot and the Minuteman Chevrolet Company. The morning was cool and in a field of beans on the road I made a farmer blush, silently studying his beans. ”

White has used many prepositional phrases in the following lines. The first four sentences function as adverb phrases and the last as an adjective phrase, modifying a noun.

Example # 4: Paul Clifford (by Edward Bulwer-Lytton)
"It was a dark and stormy night; the rain was pouring down, except at occasional intervals, when it was slowed down by a violent gust of wind that swept through the streets (because London is where our scene is located), rattling along the rooftops and fiercely waving the meager flame of lamps fighting the darkness . "

Lytton has used a prepositional phrase that functions as an adverb phrase. All the phrases are modifying their respective objects and adding essential information to the text.

Example # 5: Unreliable memories (by Clive James)
surrounding benches, shot out of the back annex , along the corridor, through the connecting door, into the corridor, to the trampoline and into space. It pushed me to the ground like a tack. ”

However, the final prepositional phrase works as an adjective phrase, modifying the pronoun.

Function
The role of a prepositional phrase is significant because it allows writers to provide complete information. In fact, many adverbial phrases occur in a single sentence, as they are flexible in syntactic roles, modifying positions and functions of sentences. Prepositional phrases provide essential information on questions beginning with how, where, what, what you po and when, etc. Furthermore, a prepositional phrase can also modify a sentence with additional details.