To lie amid some sylvan scene,
Where, the long drooping boughs between,
Shadows dark and sunlight sheen
Alternate come and go.”—Longfellow.
We find the transposition, too, in the familiar expressions the year round, the night through, the world over; as, “The evergreens can keep a secret the year round, some one has said.”—Burroughs.
The Prepositional Phrase as an Abridgment of a Proposition.—In the chapter on the adverbial clause of degree we found that the clause as expressed frequently consists only of the conjunction and a prepositional phrase; as, “The force of the wind had never been greater than at this moment.” We cannot give a satisfactory analysis of such a sentence without supplying after than the subject it and the verb was. It is best also to supply where a clause of manner has been abridged; as, “The scene changed as at a theatre.”
But there are sentences in which propositions have been abridged to prepositional phrases and no ellipsis can be supplied; for example, “In manner he was quiet and gentlemanlike, with the natural courtesy of high breeding.”—Froude. In this sentence the phrase is equivalent to an independent proposition joined to the first proposition by the conjunction and,—“and he had the natural courtesy of high breeding.” Such a phrase may be described as an accompaniment of the predicate rather than a modifier of any word in it.
Exercise 28
Dispose of all prepositional phrases in the following sentences.
1. One object of the celebration was to obtain the means of raising a monument to Clive in his native country.—McCarthy.