Preposition and Its Special Uses: Part 1

            

Introduction

A preposition is defined as a word that links a noun, pronoun, or noun phrase to some other part of the sentence. It usually comes before a noun, pronoun or noun phrase, hence the name, pre-position (that is, before the position of noun or pronoun).

A preposition is used to show direction, location, or time, or to introduce an object. Examples include: in, on, to, at, by, with, for, from, over, across, through, under etc.

Prepositions can be tricky for English learners, as there is no definite rule or formula for choosing a preposition. However, a regular usage through reading and listening can help learners identify the appropriate use of each of the prepositional words in a grammatical structure.

In this class, we want to consider the special use of the selected five among the commonest examples of preposition; others will come up in the subsequent posts. We are considering the following: on, in, for, of and to.

Here we go….

ON

i. Used to express a surface of something:

Examples
I put an egg on the kitchen table.
The paper is on my desk.

ii. Used to specify days and dates:

Examples
The garbage truck comes on Wednesdays.
I was born on the 14th day of June in 1988.

iii. Used to indicate an activity going on a device or machine, such as a phone or computer:

Examples
He is on the phone right now.
She has been on the computer since this morning.
My favorite movie will be on TV tonight.

iv. Used to indicate any outer part of the body:

Examples
The stick hit me on my shoulder.
He kissed me on my cheek.
I wear a ring on my finger.

v. Used to indicate the state of something:

Examples
Everything in this store is on sale.
The building is on fire.

IN

i. Used for unspecific times during a day, month, season, year:

Examples
She always reads newspapers in the morning.
In the summer, we have a rainy season for three weeks.
The new semester will start in March.

ii. Used to indicate a location or place:

Examples
She looked me directly in the eyes.
I am currently staying in a hotel.
My hometown is Los Angeles, which is in California.

iii. Used to indicate a shape, color, or size:

Examples
This painting is mostly in blue.
The students stood in a circle.
This jacket comes in four different sizes.

iv. Used to express while doing something:

Examples
In preparing for the final report, we revised the tone three times.
A catch phrase needs to be impressive in marketing a product.

v. Used to indicate a belief, opinion, interest, or feeling:

Examples
I believe in the next life.
We are not interested in gambling.

FOR

i. Used to indicate the use of something:

Examples
This place is for exhibitions and shows.
I baked a cake for your birthday.
I put a note on the door for privacy.
She has been studying hard for the final exam.

ii. Used to mean because of:

Examples
I am so happy for you.
We feel deeply sorry for your loss.
For this reason, I’ve decided to quit this job.

iii. Used to indicate time or duration:

Examples
He’s been famous for many decades.
I attended the university for one year.

OF

i. Used for belonging to, relating to, or connected with:

Examples
The secret of this game is that you can’t ever win.
The highlight of the show is at the end.
The first page of the book describes the author’s profile.
I always dreamed of being rich and famous.

ii. Used to indicate reference:

Examples
I got married in the summer of 2000.
This is a picture of my family.
I got a discount of 10 percent on the purchase.

iii. Used to indicate an amount or number:

Examples
I drank three cups of milk.
A large number of people gathered to protest.
I had only four hours of sleep during the last two days..

TO

i. Used to indicate the direction of place, person, or thing that someone or something moves toward

Examples
I am heading to the entrance of the building.
The package was mailed to Mr. Kim yesterday.
All of us went to the movie theater.
Please send it back to me.

ii. Used to indicate a limit or an ending point:

Examples
The snow was piled up to the roof.
The stock prices rose up to 100 dollars.

iii. Used to indicate relationship:

Examples
This letter is very important to your admission.
My answer to your question is in this envelop.
Do not respond to every little thing in your life.

iv. Used to indicate a time or a period:

Examples
I work nine to six, Monday to Friday.
It is now 10 to five. (In other words, it is 4:50.)

Look out for the follow up class…

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Nouns: Major Classifications (PART 1)

Nouns have been defined in our previous lesson as words used as names of persons, animals, places, things, ideas as well as events.

In this study, we are looking at the major classifications of noun. This will help learners identify nouns easily irrespective of whatever form it takes in a grammatical structure. Nouns are of diverse types and classifications, but here we want to consider the first major classifications of noun.

Major Classification

We are considering the following 4 types of noun:

1.     Proper noun

2.     Common noun

3.     Collective noun

4.     Compound noun

Proper Noun

Proper noun is defined as a specific name given to a particular person, place, or thing. Examples include: Mary, Segun, Frankfurt College, Japan, Azikiwe Road, River Niger, Edo etc.

One striking feature of a proper noun is that it begins with an upper case letter irrespective of its position in a grammatical structure.

Examples in sentences

i.                    I travelled to Madrid to meet with Mr Raul, my former teacher at Lexley College, London.

ii.                  Clara left Nigeria for the first time in her life on an excursion to the Maghreb Park in Libya.

Each of the underlined words in the above sentences is a proper noun, hence was started with a capital letter irrespective of its position in the sentence.

Common Noun

Common noun represents the general name given to a particular set of nouns with same attribute. No one member of that group lays hold on that name specifically. E.g., animal, boy, school, country, street, hospital, book, car, dress, fruit etc.

Examples in sentences

i.                    There are over fifty countries in Africa.

ii.                  Our teachers are trained specialists in their job.

iii.                My father promised to buy my mother a car.

Note: Common nouns are written beginning with small letters, except where they are used to begin a sentence.

Collective Nouns

Collective noun is a name given to a particular noun in its group formation, i.e. when a given noun gathers as a group. Think of say, five to ten armed robbers gathered together as a single group. Instead of referring to them as ten or five armed robbers, the most appropriate thing to do is to use their collective name- in this case; gang of armed robbers- gang here is the collective name.

Examples of most popular collective nouns

S/NO	NOUN GROUP	COLLECTIVE NAME
1.	Soldiers	Troop/Army/Battalion of soldiers
2.	Football players	Team of players
3.	Keys/Bananas	Bunch of keys/bananas
4.	Dancers	Troupe of dancers
5.	Singers	Choir of singers
6.	Sheep	Flock of sheep
7.	Cattle	Herd of cattle
8.	Cars	Fleet of cars
9.	Flowers	Bouquet of flowers
10.	Sailors	Crew of sailors
11.	Teachers/Workers	Staff of teachers/workers
12.	Students	Class of students
13.	Musicians	Band of musicians
14.	Worshippers	Congregation of worshippers
15.	Rioters	Mob of rioters
16.	Angels	Host of angels

Examples in sentences

i.                    The shepherd took the flock to the open field for pasture.

ii.                  The pastor delivered a sermon to the congregation.

iii.                To be a member of the choir, one needs to learn the rudiments of music.

Compound Nouns

Compound nouns are nouns formed by a combination of two or more independent words, with or without a hyphen in between. E.g., meatpie (meat+pie), pancake (pan+cake), classroom (class+room), lunchpad (launch+pad), blackboard (black+board), mother-in-law (mother+in+law), governor-general (governor+general) etc.

Examples in sentences

i.                    John misplaced his father’s suitcase.

ii.                  Mr. Smith is the new Attorney-general of the federation.

iii.                My step-mother is a classroom teacher.

Exercises

1.     In a tabular format, place the following nouns under the appropriate headings of Proper noun, Common noun, Collective noun, Compound noun.

(school, beverage, Jude, France, bunch, armchair, King’s College, runners-up, galaxy, host, battalion, Lake Chad, chair, lipstick, funfair, soup).

2.     Make a correct sentence each of the following types of noun:

a.     Proper noun

b.     Common noun

c.      Collective noun

d.     Compound noun

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English Language Basics: Parts of Speech

Introduction

In the English language, words can be considered as the smallest elements that have distinctive meanings. It is these words that form every other grammatical structure- be it a phrase, a clause or a full sentence.

Parts of speech therefore is a category to which a word is assigned in accordance with its syntactic functions in any grammatical context.

In its simplest form, parts of speech can be defined as the word class components of our grammatical structure, be it written or spoken. 

In English Language, it simply refers to the basic components of our expressed thoughts and communications either orally communicated or in written form.

The best way to understand this is by considering parts of the body, motor parts etc. As the body is made up of different component parts, without which there is no body, so without these parts that make up our grammar, there is no grammar.

Based on their contextual uses and functions, words are categorized into 8 major parts, namely;

*** Noun

*** Pronoun

*** Adjective

*** Verb

*** Adverb

*** Preposition

*** Conjunction

*** Interjection/Exclamation

The implication here is: whenever a speech is made, the words that make up that speech are derived from any of the foregoing eight parts of speech.

For example, someone said: "My mother is a very beautiful woman."

The above speech is made up of seven words. Now let’s see the family of words each of them belongs to based on the context of the statement:

**’My’ here is from the family of adjective.

** ‘mother’ is from the family of noun.

** ‘is’ is from the family of verb.

** ‘a’ is from the family of adjective (though it belongs to a special class, called ‘articles’).

** ‘very’ is from the family of adverb.

** ‘beautiful’ is from the family of adjective.

** ‘woman’ is from the family of noun.

This is just an idea of what parts of speech is all about.

We are now going to look at each of these parts of speech one by one.

NOUN

Noun is simply defined as a naming word. Conventionally, we define a noun as a name of persons, animals, places, things and ideas. 

Meanwhile, beyond this definition, students can identify a noun in any grammatical context based on the questions it answers. A noun answers the question, ‘what?’ or ‘who?’.

Examples of nouns include Smith, Adewumi, Bassey, Chidimma, Ibrahim, goat, dog, Lagos, London, Japan, chair, laptop, intelligence, beauty, teacher etc.

Examples in sentences

1.     Ujunwa is a pretty girl.

2.     Our teacher flogged John for bullying.

3.     I prefer spending money for the laptop to receiving the free gift.

PRONOUN

Pronoun is simply defined as a word used instead of a noun. This simply means that instead of repeatedly using a particular in a context, a pronoun can come in to avoid monotonous use of words.

For example, let’s look at this grammatical structure:

“Franklin was not in school yesterday and when Franklin was asked why Franklin was absent; Franklin confessed that Franklin slept very late the previous night because Franklin was watching a movie deep into the night, which made Franklin to wake up very late the following morning that Franklin could not make it to school”. 

Guess you enjoyed the repeated use of the noun, ‘Franklin!

I am sure your answer is a resounding ‘NO’!

Now try to replace each of the word, ‘Franklin’ (exception to the first one) with the pronoun, ‘he’ or ‘him’ (where applicable) and see how meaningful it will appear.

“Franklin was not in school yesterday and when he was asked why he was absent; he confessed that he slept very late the previous night because he was watching a movie deep into the night, which made him to wake up very late the following morning that he could not make it to school”. 

The term, ‘pronoun’ simply means ‘for noun’. Anywhere you see it, it is actually representing a noun. Examples include I, he, she, they, us, her, it, our, theirs etc.

Example in sentences

1.     He is an American pilot.

2.     She was asked to give them the books.

3.     Do you know these books are mine?

ADJECTIVE

Adjectives are simply defined as words used to describe a noun or a pronoun. One other way to identify an adjective in a grammatical context is the question it answers. It answers the question, ‘which?’.

Examples of adjective include good, brilliant, wicked, ugly, sweet, young, red, big, magnificent, industrious, fast, slow, harmful, faithful, Nigerian etc.

Examples in sentences

1.     Accra is a big city.

2.     My father bought me a brown sandal yesterday.

3.     Neymar is a Brazilian footballer.

VERB

Verbs are simply defined as action words or doing words. Any word in a grammatical context that indicates action or state is basically a verb. Examples include jumping, clap, look, fried, applauded, cook, write, disturb, hear etc.

Examples in sentences

1.     Ada came to our house yesterday.

2.     We are writing continuous assessment test now.

3.     I will preach in our church this evening.

ADVERB

Adverbs are simply defined as words that modify a verb. In practice, adverbs also modify adjectives and fellow adverbs. It describes the how, the when, the where, the condition, the frequency etc of a verb action in a grammatical context. We have different types of adverb, which is treated extensively under the topic: ADVERBS.

Examples of adverb include slowly, angrily, yesterday, now, today, tomorrow etc.

Examples in sentences

1.     The Headmistress shouted angrily at the teachers for their misdemeanor.

2.     My uncle travelled to Abuja yesterday.

3.     Mrs Jide is a very good chef.

PREPOSITION

Prepositions are words placed before nouns or pronouns to show the relationship between one side of a grammatical structure and the other. It is called pre-position, because it usually takes position before the noun or pronoun it is linking up.

Examples include on, in, under, from, for, of, with, through, over, along etc.

Examples in sentences

1.     The cat is under the table.

2.     The bird flew through the window.

3.     I received the letter from the post master.

CONJUCTION

Conjunctions are simply defined as linking or joining words as they are used to join words, phrases and clauses together. The term con-junction connotes creating a junction between two sides of a grammatical structure. Examples include: and, but, yet, because, if, before, though, unless, except etc.

Examples in sentences

1.     Chris and Coleman are good friends.

2.     He failed the test because he did not prepare for it.

3.     I will help you if you promise to keep the secret.

INTERJECTION/EXCLAMATION

Exclamations are words used to indicate outburst of emotion, such as anger, surprise, command etc. They are usually indicated with the exclamation mark,’!’. Examples include: wow!, hello!, oops!, oh! Etc.

Examples in sentences

1.     Oh! My God!

2.     Wow! What a wonderful performance!

3.     Oops! This is rubbish!

Class exercises

1.     Define the following parts of speech;

a.     Verb

b.     Preposition

c.      Adjective

d.     Pronoun

2.     Give two examples each of the following:

a.     Noun

b.     Adverb

c.      Conjunction

d.     Exclamation

3.     Make any good and correct sentence with each part of speech.

*** Note: the first 5 persons to get it all correct will win a star*** point each, which will be converted to cash subsequently.

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