A prepositional adverb is a word – mainly a

particle In the physical sciences, a particle (or corpuscle in older texts) is a small localized object which can be described by several physical or chemical properties, such as volume, density, or mass. They vary greatly in size or quantity, from s ...

– which is very similar in its form to a

preposition Adpositions are a part of speech, class of words used to express spatial or temporal relations (''in, under, towards, behind, ago'', etc.) or mark various thematic relations, semantic roles (''of, for''). The most common adpositions are prepositi ...

but functions as an

adverb An adverb is a word or an expression that generally modifies a verb, an adjective, another adverb, a determiner, a clause, a preposition, or a sentence. Adverbs typically express manner, place, time, frequency, degree, or level of certainty by ...

. Prepositional adverbs occur, for example, in English, German and Dutch. Unlike real prepositions, they occur mainly at the end of a phrase and not before nouns. They also modify the verb, which a preposition does not. An example of a prepositional adverb in English is ''inside'' in ''He peeked inside''.

Phrasal verb

A verb combined with a prepositional adverb is called a

phrasal verb In the traditional grammar of Modern English, a phrasal verb typically constitutes a single semantic unit consisting of a verb followed by a particle (e.g., ''turn down'', ''run into,'' or ''sit up''), sometimes collocated with a preposition (e. ...

only if the verb's meaning is changed by the prepositional adverb. In English, there are many examples of this. For example, ''let'' can have many possible meanings depending on which prepositional adverb it is combined with (''let down'', ''let in'', ''let off'', ''let to'', etc.)

Prepositional adverbs in other languages

Although prepositional adverbs are largely associated with

Germanic languages The Germanic languages are a branch of the Indo-European languages, Indo-European language family spoken natively by a population of about 515 million people mainly in Europe, North America, Oceania, and Southern Africa. The most widely spoke ...

, those of other classes occasionally have corresponding features. For instance,

Slavic languages The Slavic languages, also known as the Slavonic languages, are Indo-European languages spoken primarily by the Slavs, Slavic peoples and their descendants. They are thought to descend from a proto-language called Proto-Slavic language, Proto- ...

such as

Czech Czech may refer to: * Anything from or related to the Czech Republic, a country in Europe ** Czech language ** Czechs, the people of the area ** Czech culture ** Czech cuisine * One of three mythical brothers, Lech, Czech, and Rus *Czech (surnam ...

may prefix prepositions to verbs of motion (''jít'' to go → ''dojít'' to come towards, ''odejít'' to go away from). In Hungarian, the case endings may also be prefixed to verbs (''városba'' to the city, ''bemenni'' to go towards), much as in German.

References

Parts of speech Adverbs {{ling-morph-stub

Phrasal verb

Prepositional adverbs in other languages

See also

References