Remarks on the Expression Following a Prepositional Object

Yukio Toda

Some prepositions require within a prepositional phrase a certain expression following the prepositional object. The element appeared in the so-called “with-phrase showing an incidental condition” is the typical one. Otto Jespersen called “Nexus” the relation between a prepositional object and an expression following it. Transformational generative grammarians recognize the existence of an embedded sentence within them.

In this paper, a new concept of “Complement of Prepositional Object” is proposed, shown by a symbol Cp. This concept is derived from the one appeared in the relation between an object of a transitive verb and its objective complement. And, it is widely applicative not only in the above “with-phrase”, but also in many constructions ─ for example, “without-phrase”, “of-phrase”, “for-phrase”, the so-called “It...for...to...” construction, “too...to...” construction and Independent Participle Construction.

And, this concept is very useful and effective in learning English by mastering sentence structure.