premodifiern
see modifier
preoperational stagen
see cognitive development
prepositionn
a word used with nouns, pronouns and gerunds to link them grammatically
to other words. The phrase so formed, consisting of a preposition and its
complement, is a prepositional phrase. In English, a prepositional phrase
may be “discontinuous”, as in:
who(m)did you speak to?
Prepositions may express such meanings as possession (e.g. the leg ofthe
table), direction (e.g. tothe bank), place (e.g. atthe corner), time (e.g.
beforenow). They can also mark the cases discussed in case grammar. For
example, in the sentence:
Smith killed the policeman with a revolver.
the preposition with shows that a revolver is in the instrumental case.
In English, too, there are groups of words (e.g. in front of, owing to) that
can function like single-word prepositions.
see also postposition
prepositional adverbn
another term for adverb particle
prepositional complementn
alsoprepositional object,object (of a preposition)
see complement
prepositional dative constructionn
see dative alternation
prepositional phrasen
see preposition
prepositional verbn
see phrasal verb
preposition strandingn
a preposition is stranded if it doesn’t move along with its complement. For
example, with,to, fromand about have been stranded in the following
wh-questions:
premodifier