We invite special attention to the study of the paragraph.
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LESSON 17.
PREPOSITIONAL PHRASES AND PREPOSITIONS.
+Introductory Hints+.—To express our thoughts with greater exactness we may need to expand a word modifier into several words; as, A long ride brought us there = A ride of one hundred miles brought us to Chicago. These groups of words, of one hundred miles and to Chicago—the one substituted for the adjective long, the other for the adverb there—we call +Phrases+. A phrase that does the work of an adjective is called an +Adjective Phrase+. A phrase that does the work of an adverb is called an +Adverb Phrase+.
As adverbs modify adjectives and adverbs, they may modify their equivalent phrases; as, The train stops only at the station. They sometimes modify only the introductory word of the phrase—this introductory word being adverbial in its nature; as, He sailed nearly around the globe.
That we may learn the office of such words as of, to, and at, used to introduce these phrases, let us see how the relation of one idea to another may be expressed. Wealthy men. These two words express two ideas as related. We have learned to know this relation by the form and position of the words. Change these, and the relation is lost—men wealth. But by using of before wealth the relation is restored—-men of wealth. The word of, then, shows the relation between the ideas expressed by the words men and wealth.
All such relation words are called +Prepositions+ (Lat. prae, before, and positus, placed—their usual position being before the noun with which they form a phrase).
A phrase introduced by a preposition is called a +Prepositional Phrase+.
This, however, is not the only kind of phrase.
+DEFINITION.—A Phrase is a group of words denoting related ideas, and having a distinct office, but not expressing a thought+.