Semantic features

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.

3. She sent the letter to John.

In all these examples the prepositions have no identifiable meaning of their own: it is only in the co-text that we can say what meaning they express. In (1) by marks the element that is the Agent; in (2) of marks the possessive relationship between the speech and the president; in (3) to marks the Recipient.

In their grammatical functions, prepositions are similar to inflections in synthetic languages.

Cf. interviewed by the police: допрошены полицией;

the speech of the President: речь президента;

sent to John: отправила Джону.

As already indicated, non-grammatical prepositions can be divided into spatial and non-spatial, the term spatial including two types of space: non-temporal and temporal. Spatial non-temporal prepositions mark the position of entities with respect to each other: one entity is treated as a reference point (the deictic centre) with respect to which another is located.

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