English prepositions can be generalized and applied to other contexts.

Author: Lu Zhongti
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2006-01-01
Features: Prepositions are a in English learning. The difficulty lies in the following aspects:
1. Prepositions do not have complete lexical meaning; sometimes they have no lexical meaning at all, only grammatical meaning. For example, in "the city of Wuhan," the preposition "of" indicates appositive relationship. Beginners often equate "of" with the Chinese "," but here "of" means "" and should be translated as "Wuhan City." Translating it as "Wuhan's city" would be absurd.
2. Prepositions are not only related to nouns but also to other parts of speech in English. The objects of prepositions can be nouns, certain adjectives or adverbs, gerunds of verbs, infinitives with or without "to," cardinal and ordinal numbers, personal pronouns, possessive pronouns, reflexive pronouns, demonstrative pronouns, and relative pronouns. The relationship between prepositions and other parts of speech is also reflected in their origins. Some prepositions come from verbs, such as "except," "save," and "bar"; others come from adjectives, such as "worth," "like," and "opposite"; and some come from conjunctions, such as "since," "but," and "than." These prepositions derived from other parts of speech often have multiple functions, such as "but," which can serve as a conjunction, adverb, noun, and preposition; "near," which can be an adverb, adjective, verb, and preposition; and "before," "after," and "since," which can simultaneously function as adverbs, conjunctions, and prepositions. The most versatile prepositions, including "aboard," "about," "across," "along," "alongside," and "around," play dual roles in 40 instances. The Grammar of Contemporary English (R. Quirk et al.) lists 76 simple prepositions (including those used only in American English, such as "atop," and those used only in Scottish English, such as "outwith"), and more than half of them fall into this category.
3. Prepositions are difficult due to their collocations with nouns, verbs, and adjectives. Many nouns or adjectives are very "picky" about the prepositions that follow them. Some may take multiple prepositions, but their meanings and usages differ. For example, "care of" versus "care for"; "free of" versus "free from." Many verbs, especially common ones like "come," "go," and "make," can combine with different prepositions to form phrasal verbs with distinct meanings, such as "come of," "come off," "come on," "come out against," "come out for," "come out in," "come out with," "come through," "come to," "come under," "come upon," "come up with," and "come up against." Someone once attempted to replace the vast English vocabulary with 830 English words to express complex ideas, relying heavily on such collocations. Phrasal verbs undoubtedly enrich English expression but also add a significant burden for learners.
4. Although there are over 70 simple prepositions, very few can be used after nouns, adjectives, or verbs to form fixed collocations. They are mainly concentrated in prepositions like "with," "to," "from," "at," "in," "of," "by," "for," "on," and "about," especially the first nine. According to American English Rhetoric, more than 90% of English contexts involving prepositions use these nine prepositions. This is also reflected in the index of this book. High-frequency prepositions are discussed more frequently in this book. The high concentration of prepositions results in multiple lexical and grammatical meanings for the same preposition depending on its collocation. It can be said that the more frequently a preposition appears, the more complex it becomes.
5. Prepositions are used far more frequently in English than in Chinese. They not only appear in phrasal verbs that function as predicates but are also ubiquitous in prepositional phrases formed by prepositions plus nouns or noun-equivalents. These phrases can serve as various parts of speech in a sentence, sometimes even as the subject. Chinese prepositions are primarily derived from verbs, hence the term "adverbial verbs." Due to their limited number and low frequency, native Chinese speakers may struggle to find any clues for using English prepositions from their native language.
6. Many English prepositions or prepositional phrases have extended meanings beyond their literal sense. If the extended meaning differs significantly from the original, it can cause difficulties for learners in comprehension and memory.
7. The use of prepositions is a result of convention, and sometimes it conflicts with our logical thinking. For example, when a house is on fire, we say "The house is on fire" rather than the more logical "in fire." When a mare is pregnant, we say "The horse is in foal" rather than the more rational "A foal is in the horse (‘s womb)." When lying in bed, we say "to lie on one’s bed," but when sick in bed, we say "to be ill in bed." Sometimes, overly logical English phrasing can also pose unexpected challenges for Chinese learners. For instance, when referring to a hole in a wall, the English expression is "a hole in the wall" rather than "on the wall."
8. Additionally, the use of prepositions involves the choice of articles, the continuity or instantaneousness of verbs, verb tenses, voices, and moods, differences between American and British English, style and rhetoric, the dynamic and static aspects of prepositions, restrictions on prepositional objects such as clauses, infinitives, and other prepositional phrases, ambiguity in prepositional phrases, parallelism and omission of prepositions.
Based on the above understanding of the difficulties and characteristics of prepositions, this book provides a comprehensive analysis of them from various perspectives. The book is divided into 92 sections, each of which can stand alone while also being interconnected with others. Readers can start at any section, guided by the titles, to gain a thorough understanding of prepositions at that point; they can also read through the entire book to gain a fresh perspective and comprehensive grasp; or they can use this book as a reference, with its table of contents and index providing easy access.
Finally, it is worth mentioning the exercises included in this book. Based on the author’s extensive experience in teaching grammar, each question has been carefully considered, with some directly adopted from authoritative tests. These exercises not only test your comprehensive ability to use prepositions but also help you learn new things, as some compound prepositions appear only in these exercises, such as "apropos of."