Published : 6 years ago, on 14/06/2018

If we go by the literal meaning of the word, then Preposition is something that is used before the pronoun or noun. It generally shows the relation between element or the word present in clause. Prepositions indicate towards the location, time, position of direction. Some of the common prepositions are from, to, on, of, in, with etc.

Examples of Prepositions:

• Rani ran with the cake
• John ran across the field

Preposition alone can never make a sentence, it will always come up with some supporting subject. Preposition is used for connecting the locations, time, objects and the people of a particular sentence. Being a short word, prepositions are placed normally before the nouns. You may find some cases, where the prepositions are used in front of the gerund verbs.

Let’s make it easy for you to understand that what is a role of a preposition in sentence. Preposition actually works as an adhesive that keeps the word together and make them meaningful in a sentence. This is done by telling the possession, movement, position as well as time and it also shows that how the action gets completed. The words that are used by you frequently while writing or speaking English are prepositions, such as on, with, at, for, of, to all are prepositions. Though it is bit difficult to explain what a preposition is, but you cannot deny that they are inseparable part of a language.

Adding up to your knowledge, in English language, prepositions are termed as the “closed class” of the words. This means that no new words will ever be added to the prepositions, whereas nouns and verbs keeps on getting updated, with the time. This shows that role of the preposition is of functional workhorse in a sentence.

Prepositions are vague, so you should understand that how they are used in a sentence and what is the correct way of using them. It is difficult to do one-on-one translation of the prepositions, hence keep these rules in mind while using them.

1. First and foremost, rule is that to make the sentence specific and clear, you need the prepositions. There are prepositions that can be used interchangeably, but you cannot do that in every case. Keep in mind, because using wrong preposition can change the entire meaning of the sentence.
2. Second rule that you should keep in your mind while making use of preposition in a sentence is that, prepositions are followed generally by pronouns and nouns.

English language has hundreds of prepositions and apart of it many prepositional phrases could be created, where the phrases begins with preposition, but they have pronoun or noun attached to them in the end.

What are the Types of the Preposition?

Preposition is of three types, direction preposition, place prepositions and time prepositions.

Time Prepositions: examples of time prepositions are until, during, after and before.

Place Prepositions: examples of place prepositions are against, between and around, the ones that basically indicate towards a position.

Direction Prepositions: as the name suggests, direction preposition are the ones which indicates the direction, for example down, across, up etc.

Each of this type of preposition is very important.