Лекции по теоретической грамматике английского языка. Тивьяева И.В. - 68 стр.

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The preposition is traditionally defined as a word expressing relations

between words in the sentence. The weakness of the traditional definition is that it

does not allow us to distinguish prepositions from subordinating conjunctions.

Cf. She never saw him after the concert. vs. She never saw him after he left

town.

In traditional analysis, the preposition is used with the noun phrase, not with

the verb phrase. Such being the case, after in the first sentence is a preposition,

while after in the second sentence is a conjunction. In other words, the status of

after is determined by the linguistic status of the following phrase. Accepting this

approach, we shall have to treat the two uses of after as homonyms.

A new approach to prepositions and subordinating conjunctions is to treat

the two traditional categories as prepositions (Geoffrey K. Pullum and Rodney

Huddleston, 2002: 600). The said scholars include in the preposition category all of

the subordinating conjunctions of traditional grammar with the exception of

whether and that. Prepositions are taken as heads of phrases and are comparable to

verbs, nouns, adjectives, and adverbs which also function as heads. This approach

to prepositions makes it possible to combine prepositions and subordinating

conjunctions into one class and thus solve the problem of the discrimination of

prepositions and conjunctions.

Sometimes the boundary line between a preposition and another part of

speech is not quite clear. Thus, with reference to the words like near there may be

doubtful cases from this viewpoint. For instance, there certainly is the adjective

near, used in such phrases as the near future. On the other hand, there is the

preposition near, found in such sentences as They live near me.

Functionally, prepositions can be divided into grammatical, and non-

grammatical (the latter are subdivided into spatial and non-spatial).

Grammatical prepositions have no identifiable meaning independent of the

grammatical construction in which they occur. Consider:

1. He was interviewed by the police.

2. They were discussing the speech of the President.