The category of prepositions

This book employs a definition of the category of prepositions that is considerably broader than those used in traditional grammars of English. The purpose of this section is to give an overview of the items that are assigned to the category of prepositions under our analysis.

◼ Traditional definition

The general definition of a preposition in traditional grammar is that it is a word that governs, and normally precedes, a noun or pronoun and which expresses the latter's relation to another word. ‘Govern’ here indicates that the preposition determines the case of the noun or pronoun (in some languages, certain prepositions govern an accusative, others a dative, and so on). In English, those pronouns that have different (non-genitive) case forms almost invariably appear in the accusative after prepositions, so the issue of case government is of less importance, and many definitions omit it.

In our framework we substitute ‘noun phrase’ for the traditional ‘noun or pronoun’. With that modification, the traditional definition can be illustrated by such examples as the following, where the preposition is underlined.

1. [1] i Max sent a photograph of his new house to his parents.

2. ii They are both very keen on golf.

In [i] the preposition of relates the NP his new house to the noun photograph (we understand that the new house is depicted in the photograph), while to relates the NP his parents to the verb send (we understand his parents to have been the recipients of the photograph). Similarly, in [ii] on relates the NP golf to the adjective keen (the semantic relation is like that between direct object and verb in They both very much like golf : the semantic role associated with golf is that of stimulus for the emotional feeling).

◼ Prepositions as heads

In this book, in keeping with much work in modern linguistics, we adopt a significantly different conception of prepositions. We take them to be heads of phrases – phrases comparable to those headed by verbs, nouns, adjectives, and adverbs, and containing dependents of many different sorts. This change in conception leads to a considerable increase in the set of words that are assigned to the category of prepositions.

The aim of this book

This book is a description of the grammar of modern Standard English, providing a detailed account of the principles governing the construction of English words, phrases, clauses, and sentences. To be more specific, we give a synchronic, descriptive grammar of general-purpose, present-day, international Standard English.

◼ Synchronic versus diachronic description

A synchronic description of a language is a snapshot of it at one point in time, the opposite of a diachronic or historical account. English has a rich history going back over a millennium, but it is not the aim of this book to detail it. We include only a few notes on historical points of interest that will assist the reader to understand the present state of the language.

Of course, at any given moment English speakers with birthdates spread over about a century are alive, so the idea of English as it is on one particular day is a fiction: the English used today was learned by some speakers at the end of the twentieth century and by others near the beginning. But our practice will be to illustrate relevant points mainly with examples of use of the language taken from prose produced since the mid twentieth century. Examples from earlier periods are used only when particularly apposite quotations are available for a point on which the language has not subsequently changed. Wherever grammatical change has clearly occurred, our aim will be not to describe the evolutionary process but rather to describe the current state of the language.

◼ Description versus prescription

Our aim is to describe and not prescribe: we outline and illustrate the principles that govern the construction of words and sentences in the present-day language without recommending or condemning particular usage choices. Although this book may be (and we certainly hope it will be) of use in helping the user decide how to phrase things, it is not designed as a style guide or a usage manual. We report that sentences of some types are now widely found and used, but we will not advise you to use them.

This is the second of two chapters dealing with the form of words. The main topic of Ch. 18 was the formation of inflected words from their lexical base, while the present chapter is concerned with the form of lexical bases, i.e. with the lexical side of word-formation.

Preliminaries

Established words and potential words

To a very large extent speakers know words as individual items of vocabulary. We know, for example, that the word for the area over which a bishop has charge is bishopric, not *bishopdom – and conversely that the word denoting the area over which a king rules is kingdom, not *kingric; that there are words unfaithfulness and infidelity, but not *infaithfulity or *unfidelness; and so on. Words like bishopric, kingdom, unfaithfulness, infidelity we will refer to as established words: they are recognised as part of the vocabulary of the language.

Established words are individually familiar to speakers of the language and can be found in standard dictionaries. The inventory of items included in such dictionaries is not, however, identical to the set of words. A dictionary includes many multi-word expressions that have idiomatic meanings or are otherwise known as individual items (give in, take advantage of, the more the merrier, and so on). Conversely, and more importantly for the purposes of this chapter, not all words are established words. In speaking or writing we do not always restrict ourselves to established words: we can create new words or use words we have heard before but which have not yet become established.

Creating new words is in general subject to rules or constraints. For example, the rules of Present-day English word-formation allow policeability as a word, but not *priestric or *pick-basket. People vary in their subjective reaction to new words, and some will find policeability inelegant or otherwise open to criticism, but it nevertheless differs very clearly in its linguistic status from *priestric and *pick-basket. Policeability is formed from the established verb police by adding the adjective-forming suffix ·able, and then adding a further suffix, with modification of ·able, to yield a noun that might be used in such a sentence as The Commissioner questioned the policeability of the new regulations.

Preliminaries

The concept of deixis

The reference of certain kinds of expression is determined in relation to features of the utterance-act: the time, the place, and the participants, i.e. those with the role of speaker or addressee. This phenomenon is known as deixis and the expressions concerned are called deictic. Examples of such expressions are given in:

1. [1] i I bought a new stereo system yesterday.

2. ii Do you feel any pain here now?

3. iii Could you pick this up and put it with those boxes, please?

Yesterday in [1i] and now in [ii] are interpreted in relation to the time of the utterance: now refers to a time including that of the utterance, while yesterday refers to the day before that on which the utterance takes place. This is a matter of temporal deixis.

Here in [1ii] refers to a location close to the speaker, and in [iii] this refers to something located close to the speaker and those boxes to boxes that are further away. This is locative deixis.

Finally, I in [1i] refers to the speaker, and you in [ii–iii] to the addressee. This is called person deixis.

It will be recalled that we are using such terms as ‘utterance-act’ and ‘speaker’ to cover written as well as spoken language. Example [1i] could be used with the same interpretation as readily in writing as in speech; the others are unlikely to be used in writing because the reference of here, this, and those boxes is determined by very local features of the utterance-act, whereas it is characteristic of writing that writer and addressee are in different places. But of course they don't have to be: if I had lost my voice, for example, I might communicate [ii–iii] to you in writing in your presence.

◼ Varying reference

It follows from what we have said that the reference of deictic expressions potentially varies from one utterance to another. This of course applies to referring expressions generally: different utterances of Where's Kim? potentially involve reference to different people called Kim.

Given the length and nature of this book, there will be relatively few readers who begin at the beginning and work their way through the chapters in order to the end. We envisage, rather, that readers will typically be reading individual chapters, or parts there of, without having read all that precedes, and the main purpose of this syntactic overview is to enable the separate chapters to be read in the context of the grammar as a whole.

We begin by clarifying the relation between sentence and clause, and then introduce the distinction between canonical and non-canonical clauses, which plays an important role in the organisation of the grammar. The following sections then survey very briefly the fifteen chapters that deal with syntax (as opposed to morphology or punctuation), noting especially features of our analysis that depart from traditional grammar.

Sentence and clause

Syntax is concerned with the way words combine to form sentences. The sentence is the largest unit of syntax, while the word is the smallest. The structure of composite words is also a matter of grammar (of morphology rather than syntax), but the study of the relations between sentences within a larger text or discourse falls outside the domain of grammar. Such relations are different in kind from those that obtain within a sentence, and are outside the scope of this book.

We take sentences, like words, to be units which occur sequentially in texts, but are not in general contained one within another. Compare:

1. [1] i Jill seems quite friendly.

2. ii I think Jill seems quite friendly.

3. iii Jill seems quite friendly, but her husband is extremely shy.

Jill seems quite friendly is a sentence in [i], but not in [ii–iii], where it is merely part of a sentence – just as in all three examples friend is part of a word, but not itself a word.

In all three examples Jill seems quite friendly is a clause. This is the term we apply to a syntactic construction consisting (in the central cases) of a subject and a predicate. In [1ii] one clause is contained, or embedded, within a larger one, for we likewise have a subject–predicate relation between I and think Jill seems quite friendly.

This book aims to bridge the large gap that exists between traditional grammar and the partial descriptions of English grammar proposed by those working in the field of linguistics. We do not assume any familiarity with theoretical linguistics on the part of the reader and aim for as comprehensive a coverage as space allows, but we have made significant changes to the traditional analysis to take account of the progress that has been made by linguists in our understanding of English grammar.

The task of producing a new grammar of English that incorporates asmany as possible of the insights achieved in modern linguistics is too great for two people, and we are fortunate to have been able to enlist the help of a team of distinguished linguists. A grammar, however, requires a very high degree of integration between the parts, so that it would not have been possible simply to put together a collection of papers by different scholars writing within their area of specialisation. Instead, one or both of us have worked closely with the other contributors in co-authoring the chapters concerned: we are grateful to them for their willingness to engage in this somewhat unusual kind of collaboration. They are not of course to be held responsible for any shortcomings in the description relating to topics whose primary coverage is in other chapters than those that bear their names.

The lengthy business of producing this grammar has occupied one of us (RDH) for over a decade, most of it full-time, and the other (GKP) part-time for over six years. Naturally, many intellectual and personal debts have piled up during the lengthy process of research, consultation, collaboration, writing, revising, and editing. We cannot hope to convey the full extent of these debts, but we will attempt to sketch the outlines of those that are the most central.

The project has benefited from the support and advice provided by a group of eminent linguists who served as a Board of Consultants: Barry Blake, Bernard Comrie, Greville Corbett, Edward Finegan, John Lyons, Peter Matthews, Keith Mitchell, Frank Palmer, John Payne, Neil Smith, Roland Sussex, and the late James D. McCawley.