Okuzeka
Linguistics & Grammar vocabulary · Parts of Speech

Preposition

Meaning in linguistics & grammar, with examples

/ˌprepəˈzɪʃn/nounCore term

In linguistics & grammar, preposition means: A word placed before a noun, pronoun or noun phrase to show its relation to the rest of the sentence, such as place, time or direction: in, on, at, to, with.

In Turkish: edat, ön edat

How it is used

Teachers practise prepositions of time and place and dependent prepositions (interested in, depend on). In English they can also come at the end of questions and clauses: Who are you talking to?

Example sentences

  1. Turkish expresses most English prepositions with case suffixes: 'in the house' is simply 'evde'.

  2. We use the preposition 'at' with clock times, 'on' with days and 'in' with months.

Common collocations

  • preposition of time
  • preposition of place
  • dependent preposition
  • end a sentence with a preposition
  • noun phraseA group of words built around a noun or pronoun that works as one unit, often as subject or object, such as 'the tall man in the blue coat'.
  • part of speechOne of the classes into which words are grouped by their grammatical behaviour, such as noun, verb, adjective, adverb, pronoun, preposition and conjunction.
  • conjunctionA word that joins words, phrases or clauses, such as and, but, or, because, although and when.
  • phraseA group of words that works as one unit in a sentence but usually has no subject-verb pair, such as 'the old library' or 'in the morning'.

More terms: Parts of Speech

Practise with graded reading

Reading at the right level is the fastest way to make new words stick. Pick free English books by level: