58 English Grammar Demystifi ed
with a noun, pronoun, or gerund. Look at the following examples of prepositional
phrases:
in the dirty pail on the smooth highway
at home between us
among the empty pizza boxes without crying
Sometimes a prepositional phrase seems to be either the subject itself or part of the
subject. Read the example that follows:
Neither of these boys wants a low-paying job this summer.In this sentence, the boys seem to be the ones who do not want the low-paying job,
but because they are part of a prepositional phrase, of these boys, they are not the
subject. The word Neither is the actual subject. Here is another example:
My dog, along with her seven puppies, has chewed all of the stuffi ng out of the
sofa cushions.In this sentence, both my dog and her seven puppies are chewing on the sofa, but
because the puppies are part of the prepositional phrase along with her seven pup-
pies, the only word that counts as the subject is dog.
Prepositional phrases are the source of common mistakes in sentences because
they come between the subject and the verb, causing errors in agreement between
subject and verb. For example:
The bottles inside the carton (is/are) all broken.How do you correctly choose the verb in this sentence? Start by placing parentheses
around the prepositional phrase inside the carton:
The bottles (inside the carton) is/are all broken.The prepositional phrase does not determine the number—singular or plural—of
the verb. Rather, identify the subject of the sentence, which is bottles. Does the
subject bottles need a singular or plural verb? The answer, of course, is plural. Now
you can choose the verb form are.