Prepositions of space | The parts of speech | Grammar | Khan Academy

Hello, Garans.

So we had said previously that prepositions, uh, express relationships between two ideas, right? And we can do that either in time or in space or in other ways. But today I want to talk about prepositions in [Music] space because this is again one of the things that prepositions do: they can set up relationships between objects and their locations, right?

So I could say the triangle is over the square, right? Or on top of the square. I could say the circle is inside the square, right? And these are all so over, inside. What I would like to do is review some of the major ones and talk about what their uses are.

So when we use the word "at" in a sentence, and here I'm talking about something, we should note that some of these prepositions can be used in multiple ways, right? So "at" has a space connotation, but it also can have a time connotation. But I don't want you to really worry about that right now. I think it makes the most sense to just think of their uses as separate and just think of them separately.

Uh, so when we talk about "at," it means a point, right? It's talking about a point. So we could say something like, "We stood at the entrance to a cave." But it can also have this connotation of direction, as in, "The creature launched itself at Amina."

The word "by," when we're talking about space, means near, as in, "The house by the old mill is totally haunted." Man, all these sentences are like really spooky. I don't know what I was thinking.

The preposition "from" has this connotation of, uh, coming from somewhere else to here, as in, "We came from Mars."

"In" denotes an enclosed area, so you could say something like, "There's a bunny in the box."

"Off" denotes, you know, away from. She hopped off the rock. "On," which usually denotes being on a surface, as opposed to "in," which is in an enclosed area, right? Like I said, so we could say, "There's a goblin on the front steps," right? The goblin is on the steps; the bunny is in the box. Do you see the difference?

"Out" is another direction word, uh, you know, away from something, and, right? "Off" and "on" and "in" and "out" mean the opposite of each other. So, away from "out" means away from an enclosed area, and "off" means away from a surface.

So if you can imagine, you know, there's someone who is on the rock and then they hop off the rock. There's a goblin on the front steps, and maybe the goblin leaves the front steps. He's off the front steps. There's a bunny in the box; if the bunny leaves the box, it will go out of the box.

And there's plenty of other prepositions, but let's talk about "to." Um, which when you're talking about "to" in the physical sense, it has this connotation of direction. So you could say, "I'm going to Mosm Beek."

These are some of, but certainly not all, of the spatial prepositions of English. Now we're lucky because prepositions are a closed group in English—a closed group. We don't add many of them to the language the way that we add nouns, adverbs, verbs, and adjectives. There are a lot of them, and you have to memorize all of them and their various obnoxious nuances.

But there isn't a limitless number of prepositions. There's, you know, maybe 100 plus, and of those, you know, maybe 50 are quite useful, and of those, maybe 20 to 25 are super useful. And it's the super useful, most common ones that are in the exercises, so give those a go; you can learn anything.

David out.