Prepositional phrases??

Question

What's this?? Where can I find a good explanation about it? Thanx.

PASTEL · Accepted Answer

Try this:
http://webster.commnet.edu/grammar/phrases.htm#preposition

Lupa.pinheiro · Answer

thanx. <br/>Lu

Miriam · Answer

Lupa,
Let me know if you need more complete information about perpositional phrases?
Such as their function within a sentence, the type of objects they can take, etc.

Miriam

Lupa.pinheiro · Answer

Hi Miriam,
yes, I need some more help. I'm still lost.
I was given two sentences and asked to answer to these questions:
a) Philip turned on the light.
b)The roast turned on a spit.
1.Explain the differences between phrasal transitive verbs and intransitive verbs plus prepositional phrases.
2. Add to your explanation the differences in terms of verb+participle/verb+preposition/verb+adverb.

So, I could identify that sentence A has a Phrasal Verb (turned on), and an object (the light), then it is a phrasal transitive verb, because of the object.
And sentence B has a verb (turned) a preposition of place (on) and an object of a preposition (a spit). That's it. I can't go any further than this.
Can you please help me with this.?
Thanks,
Lupa

Miriam · Answer

Hi again, Lupa.

You don't seem to have any problems with it! You got it right.

You're right that in a), "turn on" is a transitive phrasal verb; the adverbial particle "belongs" to the verb, so to speak.
In b), on the other hand, you have an intransitive verb followed by a prepositional phrase ("on a spit"), which is not a direct object but an adverbial adjunct of place.
What is an object, as you said, is "a spit"; but it isn't a direct object, it is the object of the preposition, also called "oblique object", and it has nothing to do with direct objects in this case (the verb "turn" is intransitive here).

I'm not sure what exactly you're being asked in #2, but let's give it a try.

- "Verb + preposition" can be either a "prepositional verb" (like "look at"), or simply a verb followed by a preposition that we may or may not associate with the verb so easily as we do "at" with "look" ("sit" on a chair, under a table, in an armchair, beside/behind/infront of me, etc).
Prepositional verbs are considered to be always transitive, that is, they take an object. And we cannot split them (we cannot place the object between the verb and the preposition).
"Look at me!" ("me" is the object)
Other prepositional verbs: believe in, look after, cope with.

There are people, however, who will analyse a sentence that contains a prepositional verb in a different way. They will separate the preposition from the verb:
"Look at me!" would be:
look: main verb
at me: prepositional phrase functioning as an adverbial.
As far as I know, though, this is not a very popular analysis.

----------------------------------------
I'm afraid I'm having problems here. I lost my connection 4 times in less than half an hour so it's taking me forever to answer you!
I'll post this now before I get cut off again so that you can have at least a partial answer. If I can stay online, I'll make another post in a short while.

Miriam

Lupa.pinheiro · Answer

Hey Miriam,
You are been very helpful. Now, finally I'm starting to understand things.
I'll be waiting for the rest to come.....
thanks again,
Lu

Miriam · Answer

Hello again, Lupa

Sorry I couldn't come back online earlier. I found out later that the problem was my phone line, not my poor server. It seems to have been fixed now.

Going back to your question, I'm not sure what your teacher was referring to when they asked about "verb + participle" and "verb + adverb".

Of course, a verb can be followed by an adverb, and it also can be followed ~~in certain cases~~ by a participle. For some reason, though, I doubt that's what your teacher is looking for.

verb + adverb
"It is raining heavily."
The adverb "heavily" is modifying the verb in that sentence. Again, though, I don't think that's what your teacher is looking for. Adverbs are verb modifiers "par excellence", so to speak, so there are no strange or difficult rules here.

You can also have "verb + adverbial particle" as a "sub-group". These are the "phrasal verbs" we talked about before: verbs followed by an adverbial particle.

verb + participle
This is also very broad. Several verb forms can be followed by a participle (present or past), so I'm not sure what to tell you here.
The most common examples of this are the progressive verb tenses, in which the auxiliary verb "to be" is followed by a present participle (e.g. "is walking"); and the perfective tenses, in which "to have" is followed by a past participle (e.g. "has walked", "had walked").

Past participles are also used in the passive voice (e.g. "is called") and in some "pseudo-passive" constructions of the type "get + past participle" (e.g. "get bored").

There is more to say about all the above, and I think there must be something else your teacher expects to receive as an answer. Can you help me a bit here? Do you have any examples of the structures they asked about, or perhaps some more information about the question?

Thank you,

Miriam

Lupa.pinheiro · Answer

Hi,
really, I just have those two sentences and have to analyze the differences in terms of verb+participle/ verb+preposition/ verb+adverb
a) Philip turned on the light.
b) The roast turned on a spit.
That's it. That's all I got....
I'm learning so much with this forum, I'm really glad about it.
Thanks,
Lu

Lupa.pinheiro · Answer

oops,
you 'have' been very helpful...
sorry,
Lupa

Miriam · Answer

Hello again, Lupa

Thank you for posting again. Now I understand what you have been asked to do. It seems I was looking for something more complicated, or something "tricky" behind that question!

Anyway, I don't think you will find all three combinations in those two sentences. Let's see what we can do?

a) Philip turned on the light.
In this sentence, you have the combination "verb + adverb" (or "adverbial particle", as it is usually called when we talk about phrasal verbs). "On" is not a preposition in this case.

b) The roast turned on a spit.
1. What you have here, strictly speaking, is "verb + perpositional phrase", not just "verb + preposition".
"On the spit" is a prepositional phrase funcioning as an adverbial of place and modifying the verb "turned".

Lastly, there is no "verb + participle" combination in either sentence. The only verb form used is "turned", and that is the past tense form in both sentences.

If you ever find out what answers your teacher had in mind, please let me know? I'm intrigued!

I'm really glad you're finding the forums helpful. If we can apply our own reasoning and analyse responses/explanations logically, we will be able to separate the wheat from the chaff, so to speak, and learn lots of things!

Miriam

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