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Preposition fronting (see English clause syntax § Fronting and zeroing) and stranding can occur when the complement of the PP is an interrogative or relative pronoun, as in the following examples with the relative or interrogative words underlined and the prepositions in bold.
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.
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 sentence. Conjunction (connects) a syntactic connector; links words, phrases, or clauses (and, but). Conjunctions connect words or ...
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.
Notice that some of these words also introduce relative and adverbial clauses. A clause is a content clause if a pronoun (he, she, it, or they) could be substituted for it. Examples: I know who said that. (I know them. The dependent clause serves as the object of the main-clause verb "know".) Whoever made that assertion is wrong. (They are wrong.
In English, a given word may have several senses and in some contexts be a preposition but a conjunction in others, depending on the syntax. For example, after is a preposition in "he left after the fight" but a conjunction in "he left after they fought".
Returning to the original example above, "on the chair" is a prepositional phrase embedded within the nominal group; this prepositional phrase itself contains a nominal group ("the chair"), comprising the head ("chair"), and a deictic ("the") which indicates whether some specific subset of the head is intended (here, a specific chair we can ...
Some examples of the use of English prepositions are given below. In each case, the prepositional phrase appears in italics, the preposition within it appears in bold, and the preposition's complement is underlined. As demonstrated in some of the examples, more than one prepositional phrase may act as an adjunct to the same word.