SEMANTIC FEATURES OF THE
PREPOSITIONAL PHRASE
TWO TYPES OF PREPOSITIONAL MEANINGS
Prepositional meanings can be divided into two broad types:
• those in which the choice of preposition is determined by the verb, noun or adjective preceding it; and
• those in which a preposition is chosen freely in accordance with the speaker’s intentions.
We say that the first type has become ‘grammaticized’ or ‘bound’, while the second type is more ‘lexical’ and ‘free’:
grammaticized I agree with you; we rely on you; fruit is good for you.
lexical We flew/in/into/out of/through/above/below/close to/ near/a long
way from the clouds.
We have discussed those prepositions which are determined by nouns, adjectives and verbs (e.g. look after, rely on, put up with). These are all grammaticized; that is to say, in such cases the preposition does not have its full lexical meaning and is not in open choice with other prepositions. We noticed that nouns which take prepositional complements are related to cognate verbs or adjectives that often take the same prepositional complement, as in the following examples:
nouns: compatibility with, reliance on, damage to, a liking for, an attack on, a quarrel with
adjs: compatible with, opposed to, free of/from, lacking in
verbs: to rely on, to dispose of, to amount to, to hope for, to quarrel with, give it to me
(with the Recipient encoded as a prepositional phrase) But notice that, when a
noun or adjective takes of, the verb (if it exists) does not necessarily take the
same preposition; for instance, ‘hope(ful) of success’ but ‘hope to succeed’.
