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With a noun followed by a prepositional phrase: mother-in-law, etc.; editor-in-chief, right of way, president pro tempore (where pro tempore is a Latin prepositional phrase), fish filet deluxe (where de luxe is a French prepositional phrase) With an infinitive verb or a verb phrase: father-to-be, bride-to-be, etc.; Johnny-come-lately
monotransitive phrasal-prepositional verbs (e.g. look up to [respect]) doubly transitive phrasal-prepositional verbs (e.g. put [something] down to [someone] [attribute to]) English has a number of other kinds of compound verb idioms. There are compound verbs with two verbs (e.g. make do). These too can take idiomatic prepositions (e.g. get rid of).
For example, the prepositional phrase after midnight can be modified by adverb phrases such as shortly (shortly after midnight) or quite obviously (quite obviously after midnight). [ 14 ] : 643–645 A subset of adverb phrase modifiers of prepositions express degree and occur within prepositional phrases but not other phrasal categories.
Adverb (describes, limits) a modifier of an adjective, verb, or another adverb (very, quite). Adverbs make language more precise. Preposition (relates) a word that relates words to each other in a phrase or sentence and aids in syntactic context (in, of). Prepositions show the relationship between a noun or a pronoun with another word in the ...
(adverb in verb phrase) He was [very gentle]. (adverb in adjective phrase) She set it down [very gently]. (adverb in adverb phrase) [Even more] people were there. (adverb modifying a determiner) It ran [right up the tree]. (adverb modifying a prepositional phrase) [Only the dog] was saved. (adverb modifying a noun phrase)
The remaining part of the phrase is called the prepositional complement, or sometimes the "object" of the preposition. In English and many other Indo-European languages it takes the form of a noun phrase, such as a noun, pronoun, or gerund, possibly with one or more modifiers. A prepositional phrase can function as an adjective or adverb.
There should be a space after a closing bracket, except where a punctuation mark follows (though a spaced dash would still be spaced after a closing bracket) and in unusual cases similar to those listed for opening brackets. Avoid adjacent sets of brackets. Either put the parenthetical phrases in one set separated by semicolons, or rewrite:
The following are single-word prepositions that take clauses as complements. Prepositions marked with an asterisk in this section can only take non-finite clauses as complements. Note that dictionaries and grammars informed by concepts from traditional grammar may categorize these conjunctive prepositions as subordinating conjunctions.