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Thursday, May 15, 2014

Prepositional Phrases with "OF" (Syntax Trees)

Used alone, prepositions don't have much meaning. Instead, prepositions make the meaning of other words clearer. How do they do this? Prepositions show relationships between words. Here are some examples of the preposition of and some of these relationships:

Possible Meaning
Example
Chinese
Amount? 分量
A cup of tea
一杯茶
Location? 位置
The United States of America
美利堅共和國
Belongs to? 隸屬
The Queen of England
英國女王
Said by? 某人說的
The Analects of Confucius
論語

Here is a list of common prepositions: about, above, across, after, against, along, amid, among, around, as, at, before, behind, below, beneath, beside, besides, between, beyond, but, by, down, during, for, from, in, into, like, near, of, off, on, onto, past, save, since, through, to, toward, under, unlike, until, up, upon, via, with

Prepositional phrases (PP) are made of a preposition (Prep) followed by a noun phrase (NP). Tree diagrams are word pictures. They can help us understand the relationships between words in a sentence.
Tree Diagram for "A cup of tea" 
= [NP [NP A cup] [PP of tea]]













Tree Diagram for "The United States of America" = 
[NP [NP The United States] [PP of America]]









Tree Diagram for "The Queen of England"
= NP [NP The Queen] [PP of England]]











Tree Diagram for "The Analects of Confucius"
= [NP [NP The Analects] [PP of Confucius]]