Page 59 - DENG103_English - I

English–I

Notes • The children were ashamed.

• The professor remained aloof.
• The trees were ablaze.
Occasionally, however, you will find a- adjectives before the word they modify: the alert patient,
the aloof physician. Most of them, when found before the word they modify, are themselves
modified: the nearly awake student, the terribly alone scholar. And a- adjectives are sometimes
modified by “very much”: very much afraid, very much alone, very much ashamed, etc.

5.4 Preposition

A preposition describes a relationship between other words in a sentence. In itself, a word like
“in” or “after” is rather meaningless and hard to define in mere words.

Notes When you do try to define a preposition like “in” or “between” or “on,” you
invariably use your hands to show how something is situated in relationship to something
else.

Prepositions are nearly always combined with other words in structures called prepositional
phrases. Prepositional phrases can be made up of a million different words, but they tend to
be built the same: a preposition followed by a determiner and an adjective or two, followed
by a pronoun or noun (called the object of the preposition). This whole phrase, in turn, takes
on a modifying role, acting as an adjective or an adverb, locating something in time and space,
modifying a noun, or telling when or where or under what conditions something happened.
Is it any wonder that prepositions create such troubles for students for whom English is a
second language? We say we are at the hospital to visit a friend who is in the hospital. We
lie in bed but on the couch. We watch a film at the theatre but on television. For native speakers,
these little words present little difficulty, but try to learn another language, any other language,
and you will quickly discover that prepositions are troublesome wherever you live and learn.
Prepositions of Time: at, on, and in

We use at to designate specific times.
The train is due at 12:15 p.m.

We use on to designate days and dates.
My brother is coming on Monday.
We’re having a party on the Fourth of July.

We use in for nonspecific times during a day, a month, a season, or a year.
She likes to jog in the morning.
It’s too cold in winter to run outside.
He started the job in 1971.
He’s going to quit in August.

Prepositions of Place: at, on, and in
We use at for specific addresses.
Grammar English lives at 55 Boretz Road in Durham.

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