A Student's Introduction to English Grammar

140 Chapter 7 Prepositions and preposition phrases

[27] OBJECT NP

ii PREDICATIVE

iii pp

iv ADVP

V CLAUSE

I was talking [to a friend].

I regard her [as a friend].

I stayed [until after lunch].

It won 't last [[m: long].

I left [because I was tired].

(a) Object and predicative

I'm looking [[m: my glasses].

I took him [[m: dead].

[According to Ed,] it's a hoax.

I hadn't met her [till recently].

We agreed [on how to proceed].

As with verbs, we need to make a distinction between objects and predicative com­

plements: the friend examples above contrast in the same way as those in [28]:

[28] OBJECT NP

ii PREDICATIVE

I was visiting a friend.

I consider her [a frien4J.

The crucial syntactic difference is again that a predicative can have the form of an
AdjP (I regard her as very bright, where as is the preposition) or a bare role NP
(They elected her as treasurer); see Ch. 4, §4.1 for discussion.
Almost all predicatives in PP structure occur with as, but one or two verbs, such
as take, license PP complements consisting of fo r + predicative.

(b) PPs

PP complements to prepositions are of two kinds.

First, there are PPs denoting times or places which occur with a few prepositions

that usually take NPs - compare I stayed until after lunch with I stayed until the

afternoon. Other examples of this type are from behind the curtain and since

before lunch.

Second, there are prepositions that take complements with a specified preposi­

tion as head: to is selected by according, due, owing, prior, pursuant, etc.; of is

selected by ahead, because, instead, out, etc.; from is selected by away, apart,

aside, etc.

(c) AdvPs

There are a handful of PreP + AdvP combinations, which could be seen as prepositions
taking adverb phrases as complements. But there are very few: in addition to the
ones in [27iv], we find befo re 10ng,Jor later, until recently, and a very few others.
They are basically fixed phrases (for example, we get befo re long but not *after
long).

(d) Subordinate clauses

A good number of prepositions take various kinds of subordinate clause as
complement. These include the prepositions that were traditionally classified as
'subordinating conjunctions': see [Siliia] above.