Prepositions Tell Relationship
Copyright 2006 Marshall House
While I do not recall all the grammar I learned in school, I do
remember that the preposition was viewed as a lowly part of
speech. I personally think that it is a very important part of
speech because it shows relationship.
In more recent times, I have often been faced with several games
that trainers play to further reinforce the unimportance of the
preposition. One game is a neatly-typed paragraph on an overhead
slide with "of" at the end of one line and repeated at the
beginning of the next line, with the question coming from the
trainer, "what's wrong with this paragraph?" Another game also
includes a paragraph, with the trainer asking how many words are
in the paragraph, hoping that most people will skip over most or
all the prepositions.
Well, I write a lot. And I have to tell you that I often try
multiple prepositions to find just the right one to convey my
meaning. In a Guided Meditation CD ("Confidence of Feeling
Good") that I recently produced, I played with prepositions to
guide listeners to focus on their breath. Here's an excerpt:
Relax, once again, into your breath. ...... Give your full
attention to your breath. ...... Feel yourself moving with your
breath, ...... flowing in, flowing out. ...... Breathing in,
breathing out. ...... Notice whatever you notice about your
breath. .....
I am not going to ask you to count all the prepositions, I
promise. A preposition usually indicates the time, space or
logical relationship of its object to something else in the
sentence. In the above example, we notice the relationship of
you and your breath. In my view, relationship is very important.
The most common prepositions are about, above, across, after,
against, along, among, around, at, before, behind, below,
beneath, beside, besides, between, beyond, by, down, during,
except, for, from, in, inside, into, like, near, of, off, on,
onto, out, outside, over, through, throughout, till, to, toward,
under, underneath, until, up, upon, with, without.
You may have learned, as I did, that ending a sentence with a
preposition is a serious breach of grammatical etiquette.
Although a remedy is often easy, the results sometimes produce a
clumsy sentence. Those who dislike the rule are fond of
recalling Churchill's rejoinder: "That is nonsense up with which
I shall not put." And you may also have heard the child's
complaint: "What did you bring that book that I don't like to be
read to out of up for?"
So, today, what are you about?