Adpositions

Linguistic Overview

This class of words has traditionally been called Prepositions. However, many modern grammarians now consider prepositions to be a subset within the class of adpositions. We at Insights believe it’s important to recognize that postpositions and particles in Phrasal Verbs belong to the same class as prepositions, yet have distinct characteristics.

Preposition means ‘positioned before’.
Postposition means ‘positioned after’.
Circumposition means ‘positioned around’.

Prepositions, postpositions, and circumpositions all serve the same purpose; their only difference is where they are placed in their phrases.

Adpositions are a closed lexical class, meaning there are a limited number of adpositions in the English dictionary, and we don’t add new ones over time. There is a fair amount of overlap between adpositions and conjunctions: they both are both classes of linkers, and they even have some specific terms in common.

Most adpositions are single words, but some may be multi-word expressions (like ‘in between’, ‘next to’, ‘in case of’, and ‘far from’, just to name a few).

Categories of Adpositions

Categories by Topic

Adpositions introduce answers to the questions when, where, why, how, and to what extent. We can group them into categories according to their meanings, but understand that there is not always a clear distinction between these categories.

METHOD (how; in what way)
- Manner: ‘according to’, ‘as’, ‘by’, ‘like’, ‘per’, ‘via’, ‘with’, etc.
- Association: ‘along with’, ‘beside’, ‘of’, ‘with’, etc.
- Discord: ‘against’, ‘despite’, ‘instead of’, ‘rather than’, etc.
SETTING (when or where)
- Direction: ‘across’, ‘into’, ‘off of’, ‘onto’, ‘over’, ‘through’, ‘to’, etc.
- Duration: ‘between’, ‘during’, ‘for’, ‘since’, ‘through’, ‘until’, ‘while’, etc.
- Location: ‘among’, ‘at’, ‘behind’, ‘below’, ‘by’, ‘in’, ‘next to’, ‘off’, ‘on’, etc.
- Sequence: ‘after’, ‘before’, ‘between’, ‘following’, ‘past’, etc.
- Time: ‘after’, ‘around’, ‘as soon as’, ‘at’, ‘before’, ‘by’, ‘in’, ‘on’, ‘past’, ‘to’, etc.
REASON (why)
- Context: ‘concerning’, ‘from’, ‘pertaining to’, ‘regarding’, etc.
- Objective: ‘because of’, ‘due to’, ‘for’, ‘since’, ‘to’, etc.
EXTENT (how much/many/far/etc.)
- Amount: ‘about’, ‘around’, ‘at’, ‘including’, ‘minus’, ‘plus’, ‘up to’, etc.
- Limitation: ‘beyond’, ‘except’, ‘until’, ‘without’, etc.

Notice that some terms may apply to multiple categories. Usually, such terms have roughly the same meaning, just applied in different ways (consider ‘at’, which indicates precision whether it’s regarding an amount, a location, or a time). However, a few words, like ‘by’, may have different meanings.

Categories by Momentum

In addition to associating adpositions with certain applications, as we did above, we can also consider the ways in which a adposition is static or dynamic. These determinations are often important for adpositions of location and time, but may be applied to other adpositions as well.

Dynamic adpositions indicate movement or some other change:

Goal adpositions indicate the destination or result
- e.g.: ‘by’, ‘come’, ‘ere’, ‘into’, ‘onto’, ‘to’, ‘toward’, ‘until’, ‘up to’
Source adpositions indicate the starting point
- e.g.: ‘as of’, ‘away from’, ‘because of’, ‘due to’, ‘effective’, ‘from’, ‘out of’, ‘since’
Way adpositions indicate the path or method
- e.g.: ‘à la’, ‘along’, ‘like’, ‘out’, ‘over’, ‘past’, ‘per’, ‘through’, ‘via’, ‘with’

Static adpositions indicate no change:

Area/Era adpositions indicate broad placement
- e.g.: ‘about’, ‘around’, ‘beyond’, ‘circa’, ‘close to’, ‘far from’, ‘near’, ‘outside’, ‘under’
Point adpositions indicate precise placement
- e.g.: ‘at’, ‘abreast’, ‘against’, ‘beside’, ‘in’, ‘inside’, ‘next to’, ‘on’, ‘opposite’, ‘underneath’

Stretch adpositions may be either static or dynamic.

Stretch adpositions indicate extent from beginning to end
- e.g.: ‘between’, ‘during’, ‘for’, ‘throughout’

These distinctions may help provide specificity to the adpositional phrase. For instance, ‘over’ and ‘above’ indicate the same type of placement, but using ‘above’ means it’s a static placement (you can leap over a hurdle, but not leap above a hurdle).

Not every adposition can be classified among one of those six categories of momentum. For instance, ‘as well as’, ‘but’, and ‘instead of’ have little to do with when or where, in either the physical or metaphorical sense.

Types of Adpositions

Prepositions

Prepositions come at the start of prepositional phrases. Some of the most common prepositions include ‘at’, ‘for’, ‘from’, ‘in’, ‘on’, ‘to’, and ‘with’. These single-syllable words are among the first words that English learners tend to learn.

Check out Insights’s Interactive Prepositions List for a more complete list of prepositions and to see different ways of grouping them.

Most prepositions don’t align with a particular form, but here are a couple forms that apply to certain subsets of prepositions:

Participial Prepositions

Some participles are considered to double as prepositions, including:

‘according to’, ‘allowing for’, ‘barring’, ‘concerning’, ‘counting’, ‘excepting’, ‘excluding’, ‘failing’, ‘following’, ‘given’, ‘granted’, ‘including’, ‘owing to’, ‘pending’, ‘pertaining to’, ‘regarding’, and ‘wanting’

It could be argued that these instead introduce participial phrases. In either case, the result is the same: the phrases they introduce act as modifiers.

Multi-Word Prepositions

Sometimes multiple words come together to form a single meaning. Here are just a few examples of multi-word prepositions:

Preposition + Preposition: ‘according to’, ‘apart from’, ‘in between’, ‘out of’, ‘up against’, etc.
Preposition + Noun + Preposition: ‘at risk of’, ‘by way of’, ‘by virtue of’, ‘for lack of’, ‘for the sake of’, ‘in case of’, ‘in exchange for’, ‘in favor of’, ‘in light of’, ‘in return for’, ‘in spite of’, ‘on top of’, etc.
Modifier + Preposition: ‘close to’, ‘far from’, ‘prior to’, ‘regardless of’, ‘subsequent to’, etc.

Postpositions

Postpositions function exactly the same way as prepositions, except that they come at the end of their phrases instead of at the beginning. There are only a handful of postpositions. The three that every English learner should know are ‘ago’, ‘away’, and ‘times’, as in:

“We moved into our current house nine years ago.”
“The target is fifty feet away.”
“I told you the plan three times already!

Other postpositions include ‘apart’, ‘aside’, ‘earlier’, ‘gone’, ‘hence’, ‘later’, ‘long’, ‘notwithstanding’, ‘prior’, ‘short’, and ‘sooner’. In addition, there are a few terms that only work as postpositions in modern English for very specific phrasing, as with ‘through’ in “the whole year through“.

Most applications of postpositions use some form of measurement (as in the examples above) or other expressions of extent. But ‘aside’ and ‘notwithstanding’ are more likely to accompany exceptions or contrast, as in “all joking aside” or “his pedigree notwithstanding“.

Circumpositions

Whereas prepositions come in front and postpositions come at the end, circumpositions are two-part adpositions that are at both the end and the beginning, with the noun or other type of content in the middle.

The only circumposition in regular use in modern English is ‘from … on/onward/forward’, for which the middle indicates a moment in time (“from now on” or “from that point onward“, etc.) and the phrase as a whole expresses a temporal starting point.

Adpositional Phrases

Adpositions introduce adpositional phrases, which in turn act as modifiers. Adpositional phrases can modify nouns, verbs, or entire clauses.

Phrase Composition

Apart from the adpositions themselves, the other component of adpositional phrases is almost always a nominal expression. Nominals may come in the form of lexical nouns, full noun phrases (including determiners and adjectives), pronouns, Gerunds, or Content Clauses. However, on rare occasion, a preposition may be followed by a modifier, as in “as requested” or “until recently“.

Adpositional Phrases typically provide situational information, such as a setting, conditions, style, resources used, or other people involved.

Preposition Collocations

Most of the time, a speaker can choose among multiple prepositions when more than one may appropriately convey what they wish to express. However, sometimes one specific preposition is needed because it may be the only preposition that associates with what comes before or after.

Time expressions are particularly notable for requiring certain adpositions. For example, we say, “in 1999″ but “on Monday” and “at midnight”. It’s similar for locations, where you might be “at Aiden’s house”, “in the living room”, and “on the couch”. Some of these might even change between one dialect and the next.

Certain verbs and adjectives come with expectations for which prepositions follow. For example, we sat “listen to“, not “~~listen at~~“. Other examples include “afraid of/to“, “believe in“, “burst into“, “insist on“, “proud of/to“, and “subscribe to“.

Collocations are difficult to learn; one just has to get used to how other English speakers consistently use such expressions.

Phrasal Verb Particles

A Phrasal Verb is the combination of a lexical verb followed by an adposition, or a particle, which together create a new meaning that is distinct from that of the original verb. For example, ‘give up’, ‘give in’, and ‘give out’ all have different meanings from each other and from the original verb ‘give’.

Particles are small words that have more grammatical significance than semantic significance. Yet in a rare twist, it’s actually the particles that carry more weight than the original verbs when it comes to establishing the meaning of a Phrasal Verb.

Common Particles

Many adpositions can be the particles of Phrasal Verbs, but here are some of the most common ones, along with the meaning they usually carry:

away, indicating establishing distance — e.g.: ‘get away from’, ‘get away with’, ‘give away’, ‘throw away’
down, indicating a negative result — e.g.: ‘break down’, ‘let down’, ‘shut down’, ‘turn down’
in(to), indicating admittance — e.g.: ‘get in(to)’, ‘opt in(to)’, ‘let in(to)’, ‘sign in(to)’
off, indicating a purposeful conclusion — e.g.: ‘call off’, ‘shut off’, ‘top off’, ‘turn off’
out, indicating conspicuousness — e.g.: ‘find out’, ‘hand out’, ‘leave out’, ‘stand out’, ‘stick out’
over, indicating thoroughness — e.g.: ‘get over’, ‘go over’, ‘look over’, ‘think over’
up, indicating a (usually positive) result — e.g.: ‘come up’, ‘end up’, ‘fill up’, ‘settle up’, ‘wrap up’

Advanced Concepts

Lexical Class Overlaps

Some adpositions are also found among the lists of conjunctions or of adverbs. Furthermore, the function of adpositions, adverbs, and conjunctions can sometimes overlap. For these reasons, the distinctions among these lexical classes (parts of speech) are somewhat blurred.

Furthermore, adpositions that end in -ing might be considered Active Participles, in which case they introduce participial phrases.

Various grammar resources may differ from this one in how certain words are categorized. But the important thing is that these categorizations do not change how these words are ultimately used and understood in practice.

Shortcuts

Some adpositions have shortcut versions. This may be due to different pronunciations for certain dialects, or quicker and easier ways of writing/typing certain words, or making a word come across as more poetic.

The prepositions ‘about’, ‘circa’, and ‘versus’ may be abbreviated as ‘abt.’, ‘ca.’, and ‘vs.’, respectively.
The prepositions ‘amidst’, ‘beneath’, ‘between’, and ‘over’ may be condensed to a single syllable with ‘midst’, ”neath’, ”tween’, and ‘o’er’, respectively.
‘with’ and ‘without’ can be expressed as ‘w/’ and ‘w/o’, respectively.
With the rise of digital communication, it’s become common to shorten ‘regarding’ and ‘through’ down to ‘re:’ and ‘thru’, respectively.

Ending with an Adposition

One of the big ‘no-no’s of grammar is that we “should not end a sentence with a preposition”. While this is good advice most of the time, there are exceptions to ending a clause with an adposition.

The rule comes from the idea that prepositions, by definition, come before something. Thinking about this in reverse, it means that something else needs to come after prepositions. It would not make sense to end a clause with a preposition in cases like: “~~She lent her scarf to,~~” or “~~We forgot all about.~~” Such expressions need a nominal to follow those prepositions in order to complete the thought.

However, we might end up with what’s called a stranded preposition when the nominal that’s meant to follow it is represented by an interrogative pronoun and is instead at the front of the clause, as in “Whom did she lend her scarf to?” The prepositional phrase is “to whom”, but it’s simply rearranged to meet a type of structure that’s used for Question Forms, Content Clauses, and Relative Clauses. In formal English, we might keep the prepositional phrase together with “To whom did she lend the scarf?” but this can sound clunky or even confusing in casual speech.

The other reason a clause might end in an adposition is if it’s something other than a preposition. It’s perfectly fine to end a clause with a postposition (as in “Please stand six feet apart,”) or with a Phrasal Verb particle (as in “We will never give up,”).

English Grammar Encyclopedia for Educators