Please sir answer me
What’s the difference between these two sentences:
1) I played football with my friends in the playground.
2) I lived at home with my parents to save money.
Why in the first sentence we put( with my friends) first
And in the second sentence we put (with my parents) right after the PP( at home) ?
What’s the order we should follow to organize multiple PPs in a sentence
Am confused

Thank you very much!

Hi Ana,

They are both correct, with prepositional phrases like this there’s no real order to stick to, but it can depend on what we want to emphasise. To be honest, I started to write an explanation that would show why we might lead with one and not the other, but I think it would be more confusing than helpful, because in reality unless we wish to frame things in a specific way (e.g. we are particularly responding to “Who do you play in the park with?” – “I play in the park with my friends”; even here the order isn’t necessary) then really it is not important which way round they go.

There are some areas with prepositional phrases where this will matter more than others, but not in this instance!

Best,

Phil

Hi Shizuka,

Sorry I’ve been slow on replying to this one – these are probably questions that would be worthy a more extensive prepositions post in themselves. But in short, I don’t think I would say prepositional phrases act as adjectives/adverbs as their purpose and placement is different. Prepositional phrases typically describe relationships between nouns, for instance describing purpose or position, rather than as describing words (making your explanation for b more accurate).

For c, I think you’ll typically have an object to connect a preposition with; even when we have an unknown, it will have a question word or an indicator of an unknown (like “something”, “somewhere”) to connect to. I can’t think of an example where that wouldn’t be true, but then there are always exceptions…

For d), well in English anything is possible, regional uses may mix things up, and it’s quite common now in everyday use (though it used to be very frowned upon) to end a sentence with a preposition, where the object comes earlier. This usually happens in questions or relative clauses, for example, “the people I was working with” or “What are you writing on?”

e) again as I’ve said above, I’m not sure why you’d want to compare prepositional phrases with adjectives and adverbials, as their purposes are rather different

f) Yes, the object case should be used, so your correct option is ‘speak to me and her’.

Hope this helps!

Phil

Some queries on prepositions:
(a) Do the prepositions always team up with objects to form prepositional phrases that act as adjectives or adverbs in sentences?
(b) I’ve also heard it explained that prepositions help link nouns/pronouns which are the objects of the prepositions, to other words in a sentences. Just to confirm that this definition gels with that of (a) in that prepositions link their objects to other words in a sentence by functioning collectively with their objects to act as a phrase (i.e. prepositional phrase) which acts as an adjective or adverb to modify other parts of a sentence?
(c) Is it possible for prepositions to work as prepositions in sentences, without taking any objects?
(d) Do the objects of prepositions always come after the prepositions? possible for the objects to come before the prepositions?
(e) is it right to call a prepositional phrase an adjective phrase or adverbial phrase simply because they serve as adjectives or adverbs in a sentence? My point being that shouldn’t we instead reserve the term adjective phrase only for phrases that comprise an adjective with its modifiers rather than a prepositional phrase that serves as an adjective? Same question applies to adverbial phrase.
(f) also, objects of prepositions that happen to be pronouns must be in the objective case right? So in this case, is it right to say “Should people speak to she and I? Should they speak to me and her? Or should they speak to she and me?” – which is right?

Thanks much!

Regards,
Shizuka

Hi Bijay,

Unfortunately, I think this is an area that will really depend on the context of a sentence, as exactly how the different nouns in a sentence relate to each other will dictate how we will most clearly understand their relationships. In your example, that order doesn’t really make any difference, but it will matter more in sentences where the different order of relationships can change understanding; it won’t necessarily be correct or incorrect, merely lead to a different understanding of the situation.

Phil

Is there any format of word order of preposition as the word order of adjectives like: quantity, opinion, size, age, color, shape, origin, material and purpose.

Hi Miranda,
With relative clauses I’d say the clearest way to look at it is to put the most important information closest to the thing it defines; the prepositions create relationships between the sentence components here, so their position will depend on the context of the sentence. With “The girl who I lent some money to”, “to lend + to” answers “Who did you lend money to?”, whereas with “The girl I went to the cinema with”, “went + to” answers “Where did you go?” So in these two examples we’re not so much looking at the prepositional phrase and place changing position, as looking at which prepositional phrase fits the verb. I hope this makes sense?