Underscore the prepositions in the following sentences:
- He went to the door and looked out upon the field.
- Over the river and through the woods, to Grandfather's house we go.
- He saw them in the distance as they were coming toward him.
- They went along the road, across the bridge, and hid among the trees at the foot of the hill.
- They came from Minneapolis down the river by boat.
- The war between the classes is a struggle against exploitation.
- The army was intrenched behind the barricades before dawn.
- His claim was within the law but without justice.
CONJUNCTIONS
50. We have found that the preposition is a very important connective word. It connects two words and shows what one of them has to do with the other, but the preposition is not the only connective word which we use in English. We have another part of speech which performs an important function as a connective word. Notice the following sentence:
- Men and women struggle for their rights.
Can you find a word in this sentence which is a connective word besides the preposition for? Did you notice that little word and? The noun men and the noun women are both subjects of the verb struggle, and they are joined by this little connective word and. If we did not have this word we would have to use two sentences to express our thought, thus:
- Men struggle for their rights.
- Women struggle for their rights.
But with the use of this connective word and we can combine these two sentences and express it all in one sentence:
- Men and women struggle for their rights.
This word is used in a different manner from the preposition. The preposition connects two words and makes one modify the other. When we say, Get the book on the table, the phrase on the table designates the book just as much as if we had said, Get the green book. So the use of the preposition enables us to show the relation between two words and to make one word describe or modify the other.