PREPOSITIONS THE OTHER DAY

I hear a lot about prepositions and, I am certain, you must have had people, they may be students or others, talking their heads off how these mysterious grammatical elements from English encroaching upon the domains of foreign languages, as being ubiquitous. The other day on the train I came across a group of students, likely to be on their way back home after a job oriented exam stipulated to be held that day. They brought up a discussion how they struggled through the twenty five items of English language, with question sheets in their hands. This encounter with students, all of them were job aspirants, followed those interesting experiences I had had in a train compartment. I turned to the girl in denim jeans, sitting by the window talking to the other girl on her left how she was getting on at the coaching centre of her choice, her face shone with confidence as she told her: “I have learnt some secret short cuts to deal with critical questions in the exam, quick and intelligent, but none of these is meant for the outsiders.” I asked her for the question sheet and went through the contents, and one of them, I felt to be thought-provoking in nature, was There was a…on the midnight train, followed by four alternatives hold up, hold in, hold, and hold out. The girl opted for hold in because, as she advocated “in is the preposition that sounds best placed before the other one on.” It was the moment of reckoning; the girl, who stood out confident among a crowd engulfed in diffidence, and observant of the sanctity of some clandestine rules connected with English, had no care for violating the chastity of the language itself. There are people in our society who like doing things the wrong way even if it gives them a lot of trouble. She looked at me askance as I tried to convince her that in might be an adverb preceding the preposition on, and the sentence would sound unproductive of a reasonable sense in that case. The speaker here declares that either there was a delay on the midnight train or its passengers were robbed as they were on board the midnight train. I wasn’t sure whether she relied on my account or not; but she continued to have the courage of her convictions as I got off the train. While having lessons on prepositions, you must think over the forms prepositions are generally branched into: prepositions in general, prepositions in phrases, prepositional verbs, appropriate prepositions, and prepositions used idiomatically (a variety of prepositional phrases). The way we have seen this part of speech theorized in different English grammars, a word or a group of words placed before a noun or a noun- equivalent connects it to the rest of the sentence, is likely to be intellectually demanding as we come in contact with its application. One of a number of mistakes that students commit is, as far as prepositions are concerned, as the girl did the other day, their growing tendency to confusing them with adverbs. The order of words should have been ‘There was a hold up on the midnight train’, with the adverb ‘up’ coming before the preposition ‘on’. Deliberating on a few more cases will help you puzzle out the riddle, as some of you will be thinking it is the state they have fallen into. Below given are two similar cases e.g. ‘The bird is looking out for its prey.’ and   ‘They had to fall back on dry fruits’.

In the first sentence we have the adverb ‘out’ modifying its verb ‘looking’, going before it, and the preposition ‘for’ leading the noun phrase ‘its prey’. There is a linguistic or intelligible division (externalized by the rules of accent) perceived between the two groups ‘the bird is looking out’ and ‘for its prey’. In the second one ‘back’ is an adverb, but the preposition ‘on’ preceding its object, a noun or a noun phrase, ‘dry fruits’. And the division is felt between ‘back’ and ‘on’. You must not forget that ‘to’, as we see it in the sentence, is a full infinitive affixed to ‘have’ to convey an external obligation. Here I’d like you to be careful about the kind of difference between a general verb and when the verb is expressed modified by an adverb particle following it, e.g. ‘throw’ actually has the sense ‘to hurl something with force’, but a distinguishable difference in meaning we have in the group ‘throw away’ which connotes ‘to get rid of something we no longer want’. Another example of it, as I could trace in the question paper the girl handed me in the train compartment, is: The stream was……….by the waterfall followed by the options fed, fed up, filled, and fulled. Now, the correct alternative fed, when it fills in the portion left blank, the sentence literally means ‘the stream has it supply of water from the waterfall’. Fed up would give the sense of ‘getting bored with a situation that has continued for a long time’. A Phrasal verb, generally the combination of a verb followed by an adverb, when used transitively, has something in common with a prepositional verb, a verb grouped with a preposition or a group of prepositions following it immediately after, in so far as both of them have objects: Philander puts his favourite coat on./ Philander puts on his favourite coat. The examples cited above serve to introduce the variety in the use of objects in phrasal verbs, with the main importance lies on the last items. The prepositional verb in the sentence ‘Desdemona insisted on going there’, apart from being exemplary in its own field, identifies itself with an appropriate preposition, a special phenomenon where certain verbs or adjectives are bound to be followed by fixed prepositions. Please memorize them in an analytical way.

English is a language characterized as one having a felicity of expression out of a plethora of choices flavoured with different aspects of life. Look out for the stylistic variety in the grammatical order of words in the following two expressions: (a) The young monk to whom the king was talking had a wide knowledge of spirituality.  (b) The young monk the king was talking to had a wide knowledge of spirituality. Under the veneer of stylistic difference there is a concord in meaning of the two sentences. The linguistic pattern the second sentence pertains to invites our attention in that it sounds smarter and taking over throughout the world. This form, distinguished as informal English, epitomises why some people think that spoken English has no grammatical rules to be guided by - one of the idiosyncrasies that prey on the flapping interests of young students in the language concerned during their first flight. However, with the aroma of prepositions smelling appetizing, it symbolizes for you the field has been prepared which you can rely on to reap a good harvest.

Despite being an insignia of the intellectuals, a benchmark for reaching out to universal fraternity, English serves to brighten up our career prospects as well as heighten the level of confidence in us. I wish I could demonstrate a few more issues of the language, as you would be expecting, but the prognosis of it is a deterrence to my present endeavour of this piece of writing, covering a couple of pages stapled together. I’d like to come back to you with new topics of English. In the meantime you must not rest on your laurels, but try your best to rub off your old resignation or procrastination in order that your potential can be reached.