Preposition

Perhaps there are words that mean a bit more to you than you would like. The preposition is one such word. It looks a bit like this:

To

For

Near

By

As the name suggests these indicate the chosen position. They relate to nouns. Therefore, they sit in front announcing their position. These are used in sentences like this.

The cat in a hat is looking for a bat.

Let's try one more.

Cats and their hats sit with bats.

Can you pick out which is the preposition? That's right, with sits right before bats. It tells more about the cats and hats relationship to the bats. The same order goes if I had a big long string of words like this. Maybe it's a bit different in your language who knows. But now that you know the position, you can begin pointing it out. If you're good, I just might learn something too.

Cats and their hats sit with awfully large, oversized bats.

Alright, I must admit you're getting awfully good at this. I know we had talked about how badly behaved things were before. Let's try this again and see if these words act any better.

With awfully large, oversized bats, cats and their hats sit.

Yeah, that's not terribly clear. I'm not sure I like that any better than before. Can you tell me what some examples are of these words behaving badly in your tongue?

Cats with bats and their hats sit.

Cats and their hats with bats sit.

Can you tell these phrases need to be right next to the word they modify? Here are some not as funny examples.

At a bus stop the birds chirp waiting for their arriving train.

Right, the birds are clearly in the wrong place. Or are they? Maybe the sentence should be just a little clearer.

The birds chirp for their arriving train waiting at a bus stop.

Yeah, I'm pretty sure the train won't be coming to that bus stop anytime soon. How do you think it should be fixed?

The birds chirp at a bus stop waiting for their arriving train.

No, that's not any better yet. The bus stop needs to quit waiting for that train. Here's how I would fix it.

The birds chirp waiting for their arriving train.

Perhaps the bus stop was a tad bit unnecessary. Join us next time for some words that really shouldn't go together.