“Continually and Continuously. It seems that these words should have the same meaning, but in their use by good writers there is a difference. What is done continually is not done all the time, but continuous action is without interruption. A loquacious fellow, who nevertheless finds time to eat and sleep, is continually talking; but a great river flows continuously.” (Ambrose Bierce, Write It Right: A Little Blacklist of Literary Faults, 1909)
Category: Language Notes
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Grammar Glossary: Further discussion of ASPECT, with special focus on the Present Perfect
This article expands on an earlier post that dealt with the notion of “aspect.” This post goes further in discussing the difference between the three aspects (simple, progressive, and perfect) and focuses particularly on the perfect aspect and use of the present perfect verb form.
The Simple Aspect
The simple aspect is often concerned with what feels like an unchanging or inactive state (“I live in this brown house”; “I know her”; “We always had a dog”) or with actions that repeat in an unlimited sort of way in the present, past, or future (“I usually get up at seven”; “We always went to the beach in the summers”). Alternatively, the simple aspect often looks at an action as a single complete package happening at one specific point in time (“I sent her a text this morning”; “We left around eight”; “Here comes Durant now…he shoots…he scores!”).
The Progressive Aspect
Use of the progressive aspect signals that the action of the verb has some duration and is ongoing, either at the time of speaking or at some other point in time. The action is viewed from a point between its beginning and its end. The progressive aspect is concerned with change. It demonstrates an awareness or acceptance that an action or situation has its limits in time (“We’re working in the other office while the construction is going on”; “They’re having a big sale this week”). The action may be happening now (“I’m writing”), but this currently ongoing action is seen as something that will come to an end at some point. Another action may have been happening at two o’clock in the morning (“I was sleeping”), but it was going to come to an end at some point. The progressive is also concerned with newness, some change from what was before (“I got a new job, and I’m making more money now.”).
The Perfect Aspect
The perfect aspect is another thing altogether. The perfect aspect allows the speaker to refer to an action or state that occurred earlier in time without moving the time focus away from the one that is currently set.
So what does that mean?First, it must be said that marking of time is extremely important in spoken and written English. We mark the time of an action by use of time expressions such as “yesterday,” “now,” “Friday” and “tomorrow,” and we also mark time by our choice of tense (past or present) in the verb.
It could be said that the present is our default point in time when we speak. We don’t feel a great need to mark the present time except with the use of one of the present tense forms. We can say “I have a headache” without generally feeling the need to say “I have a headache now” or I have a headache at present.” Just using the present tense “have” is enough to say that we’re talking about the present. The time indicator would only be said for emphasis and contrast, i.e., “I didn’t have a headache before, but I have one now.” With the present progressive form, it’s fairly common to add a time reference, such as “now” or “nowadays,” but only when we wish to emphasize, for example, the newness of an action (“I’m taking a course in French now”) or the possibility of change in the future (“Women are wearing their skirts longer these days”).
Again, besides these exceptions used for emphasis, it’s typically unnecessary to indicate time in the present beyond the use of a present tense form. In general, If we wish to move the time focus away from the present, then we usually feel the need to put in a special time expression to signal that fact, in addition to changing the verb tense. In other words, if we are switching our focus to the past (and away from the default), we not only use the past tense, we use a time expression like “yesterday,” or “two years ago,” or “this morning.” In fact, it’s somewhat rare to just start talking about an action in the past without putting in such a time expression or without having the time of the action already indicated by some other means. Using a time expression like this is like putting in a flag that says “We’re here now in the past. This is the time I want to talk about. This is the new default.” Once the time flag has been planted, so to speak, we no longer need to keep marking the time in this way for things that happen within this new time frame–we just simply continue to use the past tense. The past time is now the default time.
Similarly, when we want to move our time focus to the future, we not only use a device like “be going to” or “will” with the verb, we usually add a time expression like “tomorrow” or “next Friday”-–a sort of “We’re-in-the-future-now” flag.
All of this discussion about flags is to try to explain that the perfect aspect is used when we want to mention something that happened or began BEFORE the established time focus, and yet we don’t want to move our focus away from that marked point in time. We want to stay focused there. This is most easily seen with what is typically called the past perfect form. If we say “I didn’t play in the game yesterday because I had injured my ankle,” the time flag is set at the time that the game was played–yesterday–and the injury occurred sometime before that set time. It’s sort of like it occurred in the past of the past. This particular sports discussion will probably continue to be focused on the things that happened in the game “yesterday,” and the simple past form will continue to be used until another flag is planted: maybe something like, “When did you injure your ankle?” (moving the flag even further into the past) OR “How is your ankle now? Does it still hurt?” (moving the flag back to the present).
Simple Past form vs. Present Perfect form
One of the trickiest things for English language learners, with regard to the use of tense and aspect, is understanding the difference between use of the simple past form and use of the present perfect form. It’s not so confusing when we’re talking about something that began in the past and continues right up to or into the present time, as in “I have lived in this city all my life.” But it is more difficult to understand why we might say “He has left” instead of “He left.” Or “I’ve stayed in that hotel many times” instead of “I stayed in that hotel many times.” All of these sentences refer to actions occurring and completed in the PAST. Why would we ever use a so-called PRESENT tense?
Well, to be perfectly honest, some English speakers don’t use the present perfect when an action occurs completely within the past. They understand the meaning when someone uses the present perfect but they don’t make the distinction themselves. Some English speakers make the distinction but don’t make it consistently for this type of meaning. Most English speakers will use the present perfect when the meaning is of the type discussed earlier; that is, they will say “I have lived here all my life” when they are still living in a place. They use the present perfect consistently for this type of meaning because changing to the simple past (“I lived here all my life”) carries the meaning that they don’t live here anymore. This is an important distinction for most people, obviously. Some English speakers will omit the auxiliary verb “have” but switch to the perfect progressive for this meaning: “I been living here all my life.” This usage, even though it omits the auxiliary, still constitutes use of the perfect aspect.
For many speakers, however, the distinction between the simple past and the present perfect is an important one for all meanings, and it relates to the flag discussion above. Using the present perfect allows the speaker to refer to an event (or series of events) that took place in the past without changing the time frame to the past. In other words, it doesn’t move the flag. It sort of says: “This thing happened at some point before now, but I’m still talking about things in the present. My focus of attention remains in the present. I’m not really talking about the past right now.” Let’s say that a person, currently in the United States, makes the statement “I have been to Italy three times.” Using the present perfect allows this person to stay in the present and say things like “I really love Italy, and the food is wonderful. I don’t speak Italian well, but I do try to study it sometimes.” On the other hand, they can use their initial statement as an introduction to the topic of their experiences in Italy and now put in a time marker to switch the time focus to the past: “The first time I went was ten years ago. It was fantastic. I spent two weeks in Rome and then we traveled all over.” Now notice how the verbs all change to simple past now that the “flag” has been moved.
Use of the present perfect where the meaning refers to an action or state that began in the past but continues into or right up to the present is quite consistent on the part of English speakers. There is more variation in the use of the present perfect when it refers to completed actions or states in the past. Yet the distinction described above in the use of the simple past versus the present perfect still remains strong, especially in writing, and serves a useful purpose in discourse.
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Grammar glossary: modifier
The word “modifier” is derived from the verb “modify.” In grammar, when a word “modifies” another word, it adds to its meaning so that it becomes clearer and more fully-described–a dog is not just a dog, for example, it’s a small, white, fluffy dog. A pepper isn’t just spicy; it’s incredibly spicy.
A “modifier” is a word that refines or adds information or description to the meaning of another word, phrase, or sentence. The most typical modifiers are adjectives and adverbs. Adjectives describe nouns (“soft fur”; “excellent progress”). Adverbs describe adjectives (“extremely hot”; “very disappointing”) or verbs (“walked quickly”; “immediately refused”). Adverbs also modify phases (“completely in the dark”) and whole statements (“Unfortunately, we can’t go on vacation this year”). Nouns can often be used as modifiers of other nouns “(laboratory tests”; “cancer research”). Present and past participles of verbs are often used as modifiers too (“He arrived at my door, breathing hard and sweating”; “She finally returned my bowl, chipped in two places”), and sometimes participles become considered adjective modifiers in their own right (“a boring lecture”; “a broken promise”).
Prepositional phrases can be modifiers too. If we say “the man in the blue shirt,” the prepositional phrase “in the blue shirt” makes it clear which man we’re talking about. Similarly, relative clauses are modifiers too. If we say “the neighbor who lives upstairs,” the relative clause tells us which neighbor we are referring to–the one who lives upstairs. Because of the modifying function of relative clauses, they are also called “adjectival clauses.” They can be used to make clear which person or thing in the world we are talking about, as in the example just given, or they can be used to simply insert more information about a person or thing (“The singer, who really wasn’t a soprano, attempted to sing the high notes”; “The cheese, which had been sitting at the very back of the refrigerator, had gone bad”).
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Grammar glossary: mood
“Mood” is a grammatical concept that is connected with verbs and statements. In English, there are five so-called moods: indicative, subjunctive, imperative, interrogative, and conditional. Grammatical mood is something that indicates a certain perspective on what is being said. It has to do with things like what is considered to be real, what one desires or recommends to become real, what would be real under a particular condition, or what one knows to be purely hypothetical or impossible. For example, verbs in the indicative mood express what is considered reality (“I listened to the song twice,” “She’s going to stop at the store on her way back.”) The indicative mood could be described as the ordinary, everyday mood expressed in most statements.
Statements in the imperative mood (e.g., “Sit here, please.” “Stop that!”) indicate that what is being said is a request; that is, a request made by the speaker to the listener or listeners. Typically, statements in the imperative mood simply imply that the subject of the verb is “you,” but occasionally, the “you” is supplied in the statement: “You get out of here right now!” “You leave me alone!” Verbs in the imperative mood use a form identical to the infinitive without the word “to.”
The conditional mood is created by the use of “would” or other modal auxiliary preceding the verb–the verb itself does not have a special form to show conditional as it often does in other languages. A typical conditional clause is in the form of “If I were you, I would tell him the truth.” The conditional mood conveys what would, could, will, or might be the case under a certain condition, e.g., “If we left now, we could get to the station just in time.”
The interrogative mood indicates that we are asking a question. It is created by simple subject-verb inversion (“Are you ready?”) or by employment of an auxiliary verb before the subject while keeping the main verb following the subject (“Do you think so?” “Have they left yet?” “Is she sleeping?”). Nowadays, we really only invert a subject and main verb when the main verb is “be” or, less often, the verb “have” (“Have you any idea what you’ve done?”). It was more common in previous centuries with verbs other than “be” or “have.” In Shakepeare’s time, one might ask: “Goest thou to the town?” “Thought he to frighten us?” “Stay you here for the night?
Verbs in the subjunctive mood indicate that the action or condition it describes is hypothetical. It is perhaps proposed or recommended but not currently real or certain, or it may be counter to reality altogether (e.g., “If I were you…”). For a more detailed summary of the subjunctive mood, please see SUBJUNCTIVE in this glossary.
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Grammar glossary: ASPECT–simple, progressive, and perfect
Most people are familiar with the notion of tense in grammar. We know that the difference, for example, between “I go” and “I went” is one of tense: “I go” is an example of the present tense and “I went” is an example of the past tense. But what is the difference between “I go” and “I’m going”? Or between “I went” and “I had gone”? The difference between these is not one of tense but of aspect. In English, there are three aspects: simple, progressive, and perfect. (“Progressive” is sometimes called “continuous.”)
Forms for the “simple” aspect are, in fact, the most simple. They consist of a single word, whereas forms for the progressive and perfect aspects consist of an auxiliary verb (“be” or “have”) plus either the “-ing” form of the verb (for the progressive) or the past participle form (for the perfect).
Simple Aspect : Composed of a verb as a single word
They walk to school most days.
He worked late last night.
The people next door bought a new car.
I will ask her.Progressive Aspect : Composed of the auxiliary verb “be” + “-ing” form of the verb
She is sleeping.
I was working.
They will be arriving at noon.Perfect Aspect: Composed of the auxiliary verb “have” + past participle of the verb
I have been there twice.
He had forgotten about the appointment.
Next month, they will have been married for twenty years.It should be noted here that future time in English is most often expressed by placement of the modal auxiliary “will” or the phrase “be going to” before the verb. However, use of one of these or any other expression of futurity with the verb does not have an effect on the aspect of the verb. Constructions such as “will go” or “am going to go” are considered to be using the simple aspect of the verb, for example. The verbs seen in such sentences as “We will be expecting you” and “We’re going to be meeting at two o’clock on Friday” are considered examples of the progressive aspect. And the verbs in “They will have arrived back in Chicago by Tuesday” and “They’re going to have learned a lot by the end of the semester” are considered to be using the perfect aspect.
Difference between the aspects
Simple aspect
The simple aspect often shows that the action of the verb takes place repeatedly (“I get up around 6:00”; “He works as a plumber”; “We always took the bus to school back then”; “They usually played tennis on Sundays”). When we say something like “They sell good coffee” or “They sold good coffee,” we refer to repeated acts of selling over time. However, the simple aspect can also be used to describe a single completed action that is considered to occur at a single point in time (“I left around noon”; “They moved in last week”; “I will call you when I get there”). The simple aspect is also typically used when the verb doesn’t describe any action at all but rather a condition, state of being, or opinion.
She likes her art class.
He wants to leave now.
They seem tired.
I know she works there.
They have a swimming pool.Progressive aspect
The progressive aspect is used to talk about an action that is ongoing at a certain point in time. The action might have just begun or might be ending soon, but most importantly, it is viewed from some point between the beginning and the ending. We often associate the progressive form with actions that are happening right now in the present, but it is the ongoing nature of the action that is really most important, because the action could be ongoing in the past or in the future: “At six o’clock last night, we were having dinner,” “When they get here, I’ll probably still be cleaning.”
Perfect aspect
The perfect aspect is a little more complicated to explain in brief terms. The perfect form is used to show that a single action or state occurred at some point before some other action or point in time. (“She had already left when I tried to call her at home.” “The party will already have started by the time we get there.”) It is also used when we view an action or condition as extending over a period of time and continuing up to and into a different phase or point in time. For example, when you use the present perfect form and say “I have lived here for five years,” you are speaking about an action that began in the past but extends up to and into the present. However, if you just moved out of your apartment, you’d probably feel forced to switch to the simple past form, i.e., “I lived in that apartment for five years.” This would communicate for certain that you don’t live there anymore. You feel that it is finished. But if you still live in this apartment (or feel like you do still) and you want to talk about those five years before this point, your only grammatical choice is the present perfect. In some languages, you might use something like the present progressive form: ”I’m living here for five years,” but this usage is not generally acceptable in English. Neither is “I live here for five years,” which seems even more unacceptable. The present perfect allows you to talk about something that has been happening mostly in the past but isn’t or doesn’t feel finished in the present.
It has to be noted that tense is always combined with aspect in a verb phrase, and these combined notions are commonly referred to as “tenses,” e.g., “simple present tense,” “present perfect tense,” “past progressive tense,” ”simple past tense,” “past perfect tense.” Furthermore, the progressive aspect sometimes combines with the perfect aspect so that we have constructions like “I had been sleeping” and “they have been waiting.” Some grammarians consider these constructions examples of a fourth aspect, which they call the “perfect progressive.” On the other hand, some grammarians consider English to have only two aspects: progressive and perfect. These linguists don’t use the word “aspect” to refer to verbs in their simple forms. Whether “simple” is actually a formal aspect or not, it is nonetheless important to contrast that notion with the notions of “progressive” and “perfect.” Obviously, aspect is a rather complicated grammatical concept, which is only given a brief introduction here.
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Grammar Glossary: Further discussion of ASPECT, with special focus on the Present Perfect -
Grammar Glossary: the definite and indefinite articles
In English, there are two little words whose part of speech is called “article.” These are the words “a” and “the.” (“An” is an alternate form of “a” that occurs before a word that begins with a vowel sound. It is not a different word from “a.”) Although there are only two articles in English, they are very different in the way they function and what they signify. One of the articles is called the “indefinite article” (“a”) and the other is called the “definite article” (“the”). The function of these two different articles will be discussed separately below.
Indefinite article
The indefinite article, “a,” is used before a noun (or a phrase functioning as a noun) to indicate that one is talking about one thing or person out of a particular category. When we say “a cat,” the word “cat” is the category of thing we are talking about, and the word “a” says that we are referring to just one of that category, one of all the cats in the world. The word “cat,” by itself, refers to a category of thing. Putting the word “a” in front of it just narrows the category to one individual, but not to any particular individual. In this way, the word “a” can have the same meaning as “any.” If someone asks you to “pick a card,” it is the same as asking you to pick any card. It doesn’t matter which card you pick. “A card” doesn’t specify any particular card, so you could pick the one in the middle, for example, or the one on the end, or that other one over there….
It’s tempting to say that the indefinite article is used only when there is no particular item in mind when speaking, but that is not always the case. In fact, we often use it when we do have a particular item in mind. For example, if you say to someone “We adopted a cat yesterday,” you are certainly thinking of the particular cat that you adopted–the gray one with the green eyes and injured ear, for example. The one that is hiding under your bed. Here, the item is particular, but it is particular only to you, the speaker. For your listener, the information that you adopted an item in the category of “cat” is new and therefore the cat is just one within the category of cats and not specific. Choice of the indefinite article, in these cases, reflects the awareness of the speaker that the exact item being referred to is not known or not clearly identifiable by the listener.
Use of the indefinite article places something in a conversation or text so that it can be talked about afterwards with both speaker and listener knowing the exact identity of it. However, we use “a” even when we first identify something to ourselves: “What’s that on the floor? Let me see…. Oh, it’s just a piece of dust.”
Many languages do not have an equivalent for the word “a,” but, in English, using the word “a” before a noun changes one’s meaning from simply mentioning a category of things (“cat”) to mentioning an actual member of the category. In a certain sense, the article brings that thing into existence. English really has little use for singular, countable nouns with no article in front of them. If someone says “I have cat,” the actual meaning is not really something English speakers can process: “You have the category cat? What do you mean?” Of course, we make allowances for non-native speakers’ usage, but when we process the sentence, we convert “cat” to “a cat”: “Oh, you have a cat!”
Definite article
The definite article, “the,” is used before a noun (or a phrase that functions as a noun) when both speaker and listener know exactly which thing or person in the world the speaker is talking about. For example, a speaker usually feels free to talk about “the sun,” because he or she has confidence that the listener knows which sun of all the suns in the universe the speaker is talking about, i.e., our sun, the one the earth revolves around. If there is only one hospital in town, the speaker can feel free to call it “the hospital” because he or she can trust that the listener knows which hospital they are referring to. But let’s say you, the speaker, tell your friend that you adopted the cat yesterday. If your friend knows you were planning to adopt a particular cat, then using “the” would be appropriate. The friend might say, “Oh, great. Have you decided a name for her yet?” But let’s say the friend didn’t know of your plan to adopt a cat, the friend would probably respond with “What cat?? You never told me you were going to adopt a cat!”
“The” is called the “definite article,” but why is it called “definite”? It’s because it refers to things that are fully defined; i.e, things that are unquestioned as to their identity. As mentioned above, if both people know the same thing, they can use “the” to talk about it: A husband of a couple might ask his wife, “Did you go to the bank yesterday?” She will not be confused about which bank it is. But something can become definite in other ways as well. In speech, things can become definite very quickly. Once something is entered into a conversation, it can become definite to the listening person even if the listener has no real experience or knowledge of that thing or person. For example, let’s say you tell your friend that “a strange man got on the bus yesterday.” At this point the man is indefinite because he is just being introduced into the conversation. His existence is just now being established. But in the next sentence the man becomes definite when you say “The man was wearing a very tall hat.” Why is he suddenly “the man”? The man is definite now because he was introduced to the listener with the first sentence, and now he is “the man” to the listener because he is “the man that my friend says got on the bus.” Again, the listener doesn’t have to know much at all about this man and doesn’t have to actually know who he is. It’s enough that the listener knows that the speaker has introduced him into the conversation, so now he has a spot there. He is identifiable. He is definite.
It must be admitted that sometimes speakers go through an intermediate stage between using “a” and moving on to “the.” Sometimes the speaker feels the need to point at the thing that he or she introduced to make sure the listener knows what is being talked about. The speaker might say “this man,” for example, before switching to “the man.” (This strategy is used especially in writing.) One thing is clear: “the” is used when the speaker feels no need to point at or further identify the thing or person that he or she is talking about.
The explanation of the articles given here is necessarily simplified. There are exceptions and special uses for “a” and “the,” that are not addressed here. But this explanation hopes to make clear the essence of the difference between these two very important items.
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Grammar Glossary: verb
A verb is generally described as a word that represents an action. In many cases, verbs do indicate actions; words like “jump,” “fly,” “walk,” “scream,” “flirt,” and “stomp” are verbs. However, some verbs contain no action at all in their meaning. Verbs like “seem” “be,” and “believe” do not involve any movement or activity at all. A better test of whether something is a verb or not is whether it can change its form to show that it agrees with a grammatical subject (e.g., I wonder, she wonders; They are here, He is here; We help, he helps) and/or whether it can shift to show present or past time (e.g., He forgets, He forgot; We walk every day, We walked this morning). A word that we call a verb in English must be able to change its form to show person (first person singular, third person singular, etc.) and time.*
Another feature of verbs is that they can combine with “not,” or with auxiliary forms plus “not,” to create negative statements.
I am tired! I am not tired!/ I’m not tired. I like cheese. I do not like cheese./I don’t like cheese. He runs every day. He does not run every day./He doesn’t run every day. Verbs also play a crucial part in sentences, as each sentence is composed of a subject element and a verb element. The verb element always shows non-past or past time.
SUBJECT VERB They left. I know. She is sleeping. He forgot to return the book. The man borrowed a lot of money. The neighbors have been away for three weeks. I was having a wonderful dream. Modal auxiliaries (“can,” “must,” “will,” “may,” etc.) are sometimes called “verbs” (i.e., “modal auxiliary verbs”) even though they do not change form. This is because, historically, they were more like ordinary verbs with past and non-past forms, and because they currently operate like ordinary auxiliary verbs in sentences (e.g., “I did go,” “I might go,” “I will go”). Furthermore, a sentence composed of just a subject and modal auxiliary is considered a full grammatical sentence just as the sentences above are.
SUBJECT VERB I can. She might. They must. Whether or not modal auxiliaries are technically verbs, they do function as major sentence elements the way that ordinary verbs and auxiliary verbs do.
*Some “irregular verbs” do not have a past tense form that looks different from the present tense form (e.g., “quit,” “put”), but every verb has a form with “s” that is used for the third person singular (e.g., “he works,” “she works,” “it works”) in standard English.
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Grammar Glossary: transitive verb
The terms “transitive” and “intransitive” refer to whether or not verbs are followed by a stated direct object in a sentence. A verb functioning as a transitive verb will always have a direct object following it, as in these examples.
SUBJECT VERB DIRECT OBJECT They sell books He loves her We spent a lot of money They watched a movie I was having a wonderful dream Most verbs in English function transitively, but some, such as “ache” and “comply,” only function intransitively—we cannot say “It aches me” or “They complied it,” for example. In addition, many verbs can function both transitively and intransitively. For example, with the verb “hurt,” we can say both “I hurt my foot” (transitive) and “My foot hurts” (intransitive). Often there is some difference in meaning or focus when the same verb has both transitive and intransitive meanings. Compare “We waited for you for an hour” (intransitive) and “We waited dinner for you for an hour” (transitive).
Click here for further discussion of transitive versus intransitive verbs.
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Grammar glossary: pronoun
A pronoun is a word that functions as a noun and that can substitute for another noun or noun phrase in a sentence. Pronouns tend to be short words like “I,” “we,” “him,” “she,” “that,” “it,” and “none,” but some pronouns are longer like “himself,” “something,” “neither,” and “everybody.”
When we first introduce a person or thing into a conversation or text, we tend to state the exact identity of what or whom we are talking about. We might say “My aunt is in the hospital,” but if we want to continue talking about our aunt, we do not have to keep repeating “my aunt,” “my aunt,” “my aunt.” Instead, we can just call her “she.” Pronouns are particularly convenient when the thing they substitute for is very long as in, say, “the jar at the back of the refrigerator on the left next to the mustard.” We can say that whole string of words just once and then call that particular jar “it” from then on.
Pronouns often substitute for specific nouns that are already mentioned or are about to be mentioned in a particular conversation or piece of text, but sometimes they stand for certain abstract, nominal ideas. For example, the pronoun “nobody” in the sentence “Nobody in the room said a word,” refers to the idea of no person at all or no particular person. The pronouns “everything,” “anyone,” “whatever,” “which,” and “nothing” are a few more examples of pronouns that are not used to substitute for particular things or people but are used to refer to abstract conceptions of people, places, and things.
Pronouns are also used, sometimes, when the thing or person being referred to is obvious from the context. One might see someone on the bus who is smiling broadly to himself and comment to your friend, “Well, he looks happy!”
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Grammar glossary: preposition
A preposition is a word that makes a connection or shows a relationship between a noun (or something functioning as a noun) and the element that comes before it in a particular sentence. When we say, “the milk in the refrigerator,” the word “in” is a preposition coming directly before the noun “refrigerator,” and it tells us the relationship between the milk and the refrigerator. That relationship is “in,” not “on,” “near,” “with,” “behind,” etc. Prepositions are called “prepositions” because their position in a sentence is the position just before (“pre-“) a noun (or noun phrase). Prepositions play an extremely important role in the connecting of elements in a sentence.
Prepositions often connect nouns with preceding nouns (“the chairs in the living room”; “the meeting at noon”; “the saddle on the horse”), but they also connect nouns with other types of (preceding) elements in the sentence. When a preposition connects a noun with a preceding noun, the preposition often shows a logical relationship between the noun following the preposition and the noun coming before the preposition. (The speaker just chooses the preposition that makes sense.) Sometimes, however, especially when the preceding element is a verb or adjective, the preposition serves equally or principally as a simple connector between nouns and those (preceding) elements of a sentence rather than as a clear signal of a certain type of relationship between the elements. (Of course, to the native speaker, the reason to use a certain preposition may seem somewhat clear or just a little subtle, but to the non-native speaker, the choice may not be clear at all.)
She was happy with her gift. (ADJECTIVE + PREPOSITION + NOUN)
They were happy in their decision. (ADJECTIVE + PREPOSITION + NOUN)
He apologized for his offense. (VERB + PREPOSITION + NOUN)
This pattern is similar to that one. (ADJECTIVE + PREPOSITION + NOUN)
In sentences like the above, the element that precedes the preposition controls the choice of the preposition. For example, the use of the word “similar” requires that the preposition “to” be used to link it with the next element. The meaning of the preposition as an individual word can be a factor in its being the correct choice, but sometimes the choice is entirely limited by the grammar. In other words, sometimes we have to use a certain preposition after a certain word because that is what the grammar rule for that particular word dictates. We do not say, for example, “I’m proud with you,” we say “I’m proud of you.” It is the rule for using the word “proud” that decides that the preposition “of” must be used before the upcoming noun.
Some words allow more than one preposition to follow them. For example, we can say “She was happy with her gift,” and we can also say “She was happy about her gift.” However, the choice of preposition makes a difference to the meaning of the sentence. (“She was happy with her gift” sounds as if she has received her gift and she likes it. “She was happy about her gift” sounds as if the idea of the gift is a happy thing for her whether she has received the gift yet or not, or whether the gift is even something that is real.) In the case of “happy,” the grammar restricts the following prepositions to either “with” or “about,” but the speaker’s intended meaning determines the final choice.