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December 27, 2009
KISS Level 2.2.4 -
Advanced Questions
about Prepositional Phrases
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Sandro Botticelli’s
Pallas and the Centaur
undated, tempera on canvas
Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence
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KISS Level 2.2.4 is more for teachers and parents
than it is for students. In analyzing real, randomly selected texts, students
who have mastered KISS Level 2.2.1 (The "to" problem) and KISS Level 2.2.2
(Preposition or Subordinate Conjunction) will probably find that they can
easily identify more than 95% of the prepositional phrases in any text.
As usual in KISS, you should always remind students that there are some
things that they are expected to always get right, and there are other
things that they are expected to get wrong--at least until they have thoroughly
mastered KISS Level Five. KISS Level 2.2.4 suggests the kinds of things
that students should be expected to get wrong at this point in their work.
Constructions that students have not
yet studied also function as objects of prepositions, and, obviously, we
should expect students to make mistakes in analyzing them. These include
subordinate clauses, two of the three verbals (gerunds and infinitives),
and noun absolutes.
The exercises in this section include only
gerunds and subordinate clauses--the two constructions that students are
most likely to run into. The functions of all of these constructions as
objects of prepositions is presented again, in the study of those constructions.
In the "complete" books, this level consists
of three exercises, one on gerunds, one on subordinate clauses, and one
on ellipsed objects of prepositions. (See below.) You may what to show
your students a few of the exercises and briefly explain them now. Doing
so will show students that you really do know what they are expected to
miss, and why.
Note that the only "instructional material"
for this section is about gerunds with complements, and it is presented
to students as "Unusual Prepositional Phrases." Otherwise, these exercises
follow the KISS principle of teaching students to apply what they have
already learn to examples that are not normally presented in textbooks.
Suggested Directions for Analytical Exercises:
1. Place parentheses ( ) around each prepositional phrase.
2. Underline every finite verb twice, its subject(s) once, and label
any complements (“PA,” “PN,” “IO,” or “DO”). |
Probable Time Required:
This section is primarily an explanation for
students of mistakes that they will be expected to make until they get
to clauses and verbals. You may want to have them do an exercise or two,
but essentially, this section could be just the focus of one in-class illustration. |
| Ex.
1 - Verbs as Objects of Prepositions |
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For more exercises on gerunds, see the exercises for KISS
Level Four.
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Students who have mastered simple prepositional
phrases will have few if any problems with gerunds that function as objects
of prepositions in sentences such as "They love everything {from swimming}
{to hunting}. They will, however, be confused about how to mark phrases
in which the gerunds have complements. For example, in
"Squirrels live by finding nuts from trees."
students will want to know if the parentheses go around "by finding" or
around "by finding nuts."
This is a purely notational question, and I personally will accept
either, preferably the one that makes more sense to them. (Note that the
phrase "from trees" is also embedded in the phrase "by finding nuts.")
| Ex.
2 - Subordinate Clauses as Objects of Prepositions |
KISS Level 2.2.2 (Preposition or Subordinate Conjunction)
teaches students how to distinguish when a word that looks like a preposition
is not one. They simply have to use the "sentence test"--if whatever answers
the question "what or whom?" after the word is a sentence, the word is
not functioning as a preposition. In that level, the objective is
to enable students to distinguish between sentences such as
Bob has been sick {since Tuesday}.
and
Bob has been sick [since he played
in the rain].
In a few cases, however, what looks like a sentence actually is the object
of a preposition, but it is a subordinate clause. In other cases, students
will incorrectly mark a prepositional phrase because they have not yet
studied clauses. For example, in the sentence
He listened {to [what the man
said]}.
many students who have not studied clauses will mark "to what" as the prepositional
phrase. At this level, I would simply ignore what they mark--it is an expected
mistake. When they get into clauses they will learn that the object of
the preposition "to" is the subordinate clause "what the man said." The
"what" functions simultaneously as the subordinating conjunction and the
direct object of "said."
| Ex.
3 - Ellipsed Objects of Prepositions (A Fine Point) |
Objects of prepositions are sometimes partially, or
even completely ellipsed, simply because they are understood. Consider
the sentence
They had done this before.
Most grammars explain "before" as an adverb here, but there are many different
types of adverbs. Students do not need to learn labels for the different
types, but they should be aware of meaning. Things cannot simply be "before";
they have to be before some thing, person, time, place, etc. Thus this
"before" means "before the time in which they were." That is, however,
obvious to any native speaker of English, and thus the object of the preposition
"before" is simply ellipsed. Within KISS, it is perfectly acceptable to
explain "before" in the sentence above simply as an adverb, but what happens
in a sentence such as
They had done this many times before.
In this case, the "before" can surely also be explained as a preposition,
with its object ellipsed, that functions as an adjective to "times." Awareness
of this possibility helps students explain ellipsis in prepositional phrases
in cases such as the following, adapted from a student's paper:
They were more interested in the world underneath the theater.
This world underneath was permeated by an atmosphere of mystery.
To explain the "underneath" in the second sentence simply as an adverb
takes a bit of work because "underneath" always implies something above
it. Thus it can easily be seen as an ellipsed prepositional phrase that
functions as an adjective to "world." Its object is obvious because it
was stated in the previous sentence.
| Prepositions
that Follow their Objects |
Given the rule that sentences should not end
in prepositions, Winston Churchill, an excellent writer, is said to have
responded, "There are some things up with which I cannot put." The "rule"
is not a good one. As these exercises suggest, there are some cases in
which prepositions follow their objects and often end up at the end of
the sentence.
Subordinate clauses are a typical case. Consider
the following two sentences:
But his voice was what I should know him by.
I could have told my master where his oats went to.
Most grammar textbooks give constructions names, and once having named
them, they rarely look at how words actually function in sentences. Thus
the grammar books call "what" in the first sentence, and "where" in the
second, "subordinating conjunctions." Then they STOP. It is definitely
true that the two words function as subordinating conjunctions, but as
we have seen elsewhere in KISS, words can have more than one function.
Why is "what" used in the first sentence, and "where" in the second?
Very simply, the first subordinate clasue
means "I should know hm by what," and the second means "His oats
went to where." The subordinating conjunctions simultaneously function
as the objects of the prepositions (which normally appear at the end of
the subordinate clause). |
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