Documenti di Didattica
Documenti di Professioni
Documenti di Cultura
on, and with. Prepositions are usually used
in front of nouns or pronouns and they
show the relationship between the noun or
pronoun and other words in a sentence.
Test your knowledge about
the prepositions at, in, on,by and improve
your knowledge.
1. My best friend lives ______ London.
In On At
2. I'll be ready to leave ____ about ten
minutes.
On In At
3.Since he met his new friend, my son
never seems to be ______ home.
On In At
4. Adam responded to his wife's
demands ______ throwing atantrum.
With By From
5, I think she spent the entire day
______ the phone.
On In At
6.I will wait ______ 7:15, but then I'm
going home.
From At Until
7. I am not interested _____ buying a
new phone now.
To For In
8. My parents have been married
______ twenty-nine years.
Since For Until
9. He usually travels to Turkey _______
Plane.
By With At
10. I was visiting my father _____ the
hospital.
In On At
• General Fact
Prepositions are
NOTORIOUSLY DIFFICULT TO
LEARN
Fact 1 Germans, Russians and Latin
have their preps inflected.
Fact 2 Preps with spatial meanings do
not always match up well from one
Fact 3
Even native-speakers of English experience
variable performances with regard to which
preposition they use for meanings
Thus
It is critical that teachers analyze preposition
through a TRIDIMENSIONAL approach focusing on
FORM
MEANING
USE
The Form of Prepositions (1 of 3)
Understanding, Using and Teaching Prepositions
•When the preposition for
expresses a span of time
OPTIONAL DELETION OF PREPOSITIONS
• When the preposition on is used before
days of the week
• When the day is used alone or when the
day modifies another temporal noun such
as morning, afternoon, and night.
OPTIONAL DELETION OF PREPOSITIONS
• In responses to questions that would cue
temporal use of
in, at, on, or for
OBLIGATORY DELETION OF
PREPOSITIONS
• When you already used last, next,
this, or
• When the NP contains before, after,
next, last
or this.
OBLIGATORY DELETION OF
PREPOSITIONS
• When the temporal noun phrase
contains a universal quantifier like
every and all.
OBLIGATORY DELETION OF
PREPOSITIONS
• When a locative noun (home,
downtown), or
pro-adverbs (here, there) are used
with a verb of motion or direction.
The Meaning of Prepositions (2 of 3)
• Understanding, Using and Teaching
Prepositions
THE MEANING OF PREPOSITIONS
• Taylor, 1993 says that preps are
generally polysemous
• the coexistence of many possible
meanings for a word or phrase
LOCATING OBJECTS IN SPACE
Locating space involves two or more entities
• Trajector N / NP
• Landmark goal / objective / area
• Basic Place Prepositions
At
On
In
• LOCATING OBJECTS IN SPACE
• AT
• Denotes place as a point of
orientation
LOCATING OBJECTS IN SPACE
• ON
• Denotes physical contact
between trajector and
landmark (one/two
dimensional space or surface
LOCATING OBJECTS IN SPACE
• IN
• Denotes enclosure of the
trajector
Driven, 1993
LOCATING OBJECTS IN SPACE
• By and with are proximity
prepositions which
are adjacent to at because
they locate the trajector in
relation to the point of
orientation.
LOCATING OBJECTS IN SPACE
• Through and about require
a landmark to be seen as a
surface or a volume and
are therefore positioned
next to in.
MEANING EXTENSIONS OF SPATIAL PREPOSITIONS
• The extensions of meanings of prepositions from
physical space via time into more abstract
domains do not occur in any haphazard way, but
follow a path of gradually increasing
abstractions, whereby the link with each prior
meaning remains obvious and may acount for
most, if not all, co-occurrence restrictions
between trajector and landmark. (Driven, 1993)
MEANING EXTENSIONS OF SPATIAL
PREPOSITIONS
• The 7 meanings of at
Lakoff, 1987
Lakoff shows how the central sense of
over combining the elements of above
and across can be depicted in an image
schema
MEANING EXTENSIONS OF
SPATIAL PREPOSITIONS
• Central Schema to
Prototypical Meanings
MEANINGS OF NON-SPATIAL
PREPOSITIONS
• The meanings of of
• Generally, the preposition of
does not denote space, but
are mostly used for other
relevant purposes
The Use of Prepositions (3 of 3)
• Understanding, Using and
Teaching Prepositions
VARIATIONS IN USE
TEACHING PREPOSITIONS IN THE
WORKPLACE
(Explaining a Bill)
TEACHING PREPOSITIONS IN THE
WORKPLACE (Helping
Mrs. Jones)
Conclusion
• It is critical that teachers analyze preposition
through a TRIDIMENSIONAL approach
focusing on
• FORM
• MEANING
• USE
Prepositions
• Understanding, Using and Teaching
Prepositions
• Prepared by
• By Orly Agawin
• Master of Arts in Education major in English
Language Teaching
• Philippine Normal University - Manila
THANK YOU!