The Syntax of Prepositional Phrase in English

Abstract

The paper discusses the syntactic structure of prepositional phrases in English from a generative perspective. It attempts to show that the traditional view that prepositional phrases consist of a preposition followed a noun phrase complement cannot be generalised. The paper argues that a head in a prepositional phrase can be transitive or intransitive; if transitive it can take any XP, i.e. NP, AP, PP or TP as a complement; if not, it requires no complement. The paper also shows that a prepositional phrase can be modified by prepositional modifiers and other phrasal categories such as NP, PP, AdjP & AdvP. Finally, the paper provides evidence that lexical items classified traditionally as adverbs and/or particles can be analysed as (in)transitive prepositions