Basic English Grammar with Exercises

Chapter 1 - Grammatical Foundations: Words

But it is obvious that in such cases the stem is not used as a preposition, but as a
member of the appropriate category: in in ins is a noun, not a preposition.
In terms of the subcategorisation of prepositions, they can appear with most types
of complements, including nominal ones:

(128) a it disappeared under the bridge
b it came from under the bridge
c he went out

In (128a) the preposition under takes a nominal complement, demonstrating its [–N]
property, in (128b) from takes a prepositional complement and in (128c) out has no
complement and hence is used ‘intransitively’.
The one complement that prepositions fail to have is clausal. While verbs, nouns
and adjectives can all take clausal complements beginning with the word that, it seems
that this is not possible for prepositions:

(129) a we said [that we didn’t see the sign]
b our knowledge [that we were right]
c we were anxious [that you should be told]
d *we spoke about [that you left]

It is quite mysterious why this should be, especially given the fact that all other
categories seem to have no trouble in taking such complements. It is even more
mysterious when we notice that prepositions can take certain clausal complements:

(130) a I thought about [whether I should leave a note]
b I haven’t seen him since [we had the argument]

In (130a) the clause is interrogative, functioning as a question, and it seems that
interrogative clauses can be the complements of certain prepositions. (130b) is even
more puzzling as here we have a preposition with a clausal complement without a that.
Typically this word is either optional or
obligatory with clausal complements:

(131) a Theodore thinks [(that) Linda left]
b my observation [*(that) he had a missing shoe]
c I was certain [(that) no one knew about the body under the bed]

It is possible that, given the complementary distribution between words like that and
since, they are of the same category and hence since is not used as a preposition in
(130b). Indeed, we will see, words like that, being complementisers, are analysed as
‘functional prepositions’, given their feature specification [+F, –N, –V]. However, we
will not pursue the issue here.
The following are some examples of the lexical entries of prepositions:

(132) with category: [–F, –N, –V]

-grid: <(theme) (location)>
subcat: [nominal]
from category: [–F, –N, –V]

-grid: <(theme) (location)>
subcat: [nominal/prepositional]

Note:

*(xxx) means that xxx is obligatory