134 Chapter 7 Prepositions and preposition phrases[14] at home with X ("familiar with X, knowledgeable about X"), in control, in
the know ("informed"), on top of the world ("extremely happy"), out of order
("inappropriate"), out of sorts ("unwell, discontented")Thus I might say Yo u're more at home with trigonometry than f am or ffeel more in con
trol of the situation than f used to. The gradability, however, doesn't apply to the prepo
sition by itself but to the larger expression, and hence comparison in these cases is not
marked inftectionally: we don't say * Yo u're alter home with trigonometry than f am.(c) The predicand requirement for adjectives
An important difference between adjectives and prepositions is revealed by certain
facts about adjuncts. We have seen that in their predicative use adjectives are
related to a predicand, and this applies not only with predicative complements but
also with predicative adjuncts (see Ch. 6, § 1.7). All prepositions, on the other hand,
can head adjuncts that are unassociated with any predicand. The contrast is seen in
the following examples:[ 15 ] EXAMPLES WITH anxious (ADJECTIVE)
a. [Anxious to make amends], the
dean threw a party fo r the students.
11 a. *[Anxious to make amends],
there was a party fo r the students.EXAMPLES WITH after (PREPOSITION)
b. [After the end of the semester], the
dean threw a party fo r the students.
b. [After the end of the semester],
there was a party fo r the students.The bracketed constituents are adjuncts: an AdjP adjunct in [a] and a PP adjunct in
[b]. The difference in grammaticality of the examples in [ii] shows that the AdjP is
subject to a constraint that does not apply to the PP: THE ADJP MUST BE RELATED TO
A PREDICAND. This requirement is satisfied in [ia], where the predicand is the sub
ject the dean: we understand that the dean was anxious to make amends. But it's not
satisfied in [iia]: the adjunct is not related to a predicand, and hence there's no indi
cation of who was anxious to make amends.
Notice, the claim is NOT that adjuncts with the form of a PP CANNOT be related to
a predicand. They certainly can be. The crucial point, though, is that there is no gen
eral constraint that they MUST be. Compare, for example:
[16] [In control of the situation at last,] Sue began to fe el more relaxed.
ii [In this country] there is less than 5% unemployment.In [i] Sue is predicand for the bracketed adjunct: we understand that Sue was in con
trol of the situation at last. But there is no such relation in [ii]. So the preposition in
can be the head of an adjunct that is not related to a predicand. And this holds quite
generally for prepositions, but not for adjectives.
This gives us a test for prepositions: they differ from adjectives in ALWAYS being
able to head phrases in adjunct function which have no semantic relation to a
predicand.