Real Grammar - Susan Conrad, Douglas Biber 2009
Prepositional Phrases Modifying Nouns
Unit 46 A number of reasons
What have you learned from your grammar textbook?
Prepositions show “physical” relationships such as location or direction. They are often combined with a noun or noun phrase to make prepositional phrases.
• I saw the lamp on the table.
• I put the book in the box.
• I gave the pen to my friend.
What does the corpus show?
A
In informational writing, prepositional phrases are by far the most common type of noun modifier occurring after the head noun (see Unit 39).
B
Frequency information. Only a few specific prepositions are especially common in prepositional phrases that are noun modifiers.
C
Usually these prepositions do not have their literal “physical” meaning:
• These findings help to set a limit on such generalizations.
• This dependence has produced a change in basic work practices.
D
In informational writing, we often find complex structures, with several prepositional phrases occurring in a series:
• a sudden increase in demand for his product
• the centre of a cube with spheres at each corner
• a preface to a book on Kant by his friend and colleague Hamelin
E
Many common nouns tend to occur in combination with a specific preposition. You might want to learn these noun + preposition combinations as if they were a single word.
F
Many nouns actually occur as fixed expressions with two specific prepositions - one before and one after:
Activities
1 Notice in context: Read the two paragraphs from different academic texts. Underline the prepositional phrases that modify nouns. Draw an arrow from the preposition to the noun that it modifies. Be careful! Some prepositions modify verbs.
1. From the preface of a biology textbook.
Brief notes in the margins serve as slight amplifications of the text and as comments on the extraordinary personalities who have been a part of the quest to understand the Earth. We have increased the number of boxes of notes that expand some materials of the text. These boxes are for the student who wants to understand more deeply some of the background of the subject.
2. From a book chapter about an insect population.
There is a need for more studies in typical parts of the Bombay Locust area for comparison with other areas; it is not possible otherwise to discover the reasons for a decrease in the population density of the locust that has occurred since 1908.
2 Analyze and edit: Read the following sentences written by English language learners and decide if each boldfaced noun + preposition(s) combination is correct. If the combination is correct, write C on the line; if it is incorrect, cross it out and write the correct combination on the line.
in the form of 1. His philosophy was that his cars had to have reliability for the form of simplicity and strength, rather than performance.
2. If airlines made a substantial reduction on fares there would be times when travelers would be unable to find seats on the flight of their choice.
3. Interviews were conducted and questionnaires were used to acquire information on the types of media used in advertising.
4. In this essay, I attempt to analyze the potential problems and the need for roadbuilding in eastern Malaysia.
5. In recent times, there has been a renewed interest for the old traditions and the language of Scotland.
6. The reasons of my choice to move to New Zealand are these: I don’t like too much sun, but I like winter and downhill skiing.
3 Practice writing: use your own ideas to offer explanations for the information in the graph, which shows human population growth over the last 12,000 years. Write at least one sentence with a noun + preposition(s) combination for each of the meanings listed below. You can use one of the nouns in parentheses.
1. Cause-effect (possible nouns: effect, reason, influence, result, etc.):
Medical developments in the last two hundred years have had a major effect on human population growth.
2. Information (possible nouns: information, studies, study, data, interest etc.):
Information on the best farming practices has increased food supply and population in many countries.
3. Change (possible nouns: change, reduction, increase, decrease, etc.):
4. Time (possible nouns: end, beginning, start, etc.):
5. Range (possible nouns: number, variety, amount, type, etc.): …