Prepositional phrases | The parts of speech | Grammar | Khan Academy

Hey Garans, let's talk about prepositional phrases and what they are and how they're used, their care and feeding. You know, so a prepositional phrase simply speaking is anything that follows a preposition. Frankly, so, uh, if we look at the sentence, "Danielle blew the horn with the strength of a giant," quick little Doodle there, there's Danielle blowing the horn with the strength of a giant.

So this part, "with the strength of a giant," is a prepositional phrase. Actually, it's two prepositional phrases because there's "with the strength" and then "of a giant." What is a prepositional phrase? It is a word chunk that begins with a preposition. So "with" is a preposition; "of" is a preposition, and this entire thing, "with the strength of a giant" is one prepositional phrase altogether composed of two smaller ones.

Uh, and what's cool is you can use prepositional phrases in a couple of different ways. You can use them as nouns, you can use them as adverbs, and you can use them as adjectives. So we've got two different examples here, uh, just even within this first sentence here. So, Danielle blew the horn with the strength of a giant. How did she blow the horn? With the strength of a giant, right? So she blew the horn with the strength of a giant.

So "with the strength of a giant," um, this prepositional phrase is modifying the verb "blew." I mean, you can really see, like, her hair is being blown back just by the strength of this, like, right? So, so this whole thing together is being treated as an adverb. But if we look at the word "strength," strength is being modified by "of a giant."

So this is a noun, right? The word "strength" is a noun, uh, but this "of a giant" thing is modifying it. So this part is actually behaving as an adjective. Kind of cool, right? Let's look at, uh, some more examples. "To steal the Queen's diamonds would be a terrible crime." This is actually something we'd call, uh, in addition to being a prepositional phrase, this is something we'd call an infinitive—the verb "to steal" when it's presented like this with the "to" form, uh, never conjugates.

It's not affected by time, so it's kind of infinitive, infinite. Um, but we're treating this whole thing as a noun, right? Because "to steal the Queen's diamonds" is kind of all being considered one thing, this big old prepositional phrase. Would "to steal the Queen's diamonds" be a terrible crime? So this prepositional phrase is acting like a noun.

Let's try another one. I don't know what that is; I just made it up. Um, but let's pay attention to how the prepositional phrase "of glass" works in the rest of the sentence. You know what, what part of this is it attached to? It's not "I of glass" or "enjoy of glass." It's "the Cathedral of glass," and that means that this "of glass" thing is describing "Cathedral." A cathedral is a place or a structure, so it's a noun, right?

So if "of glass" is modifying this noun, that would make it an adjective. So "of glass" here, this prepositional phrase, is behaving like an adjective. Prepositional phrases can be really powerful, uh, and really elegant and really cool. Like in Hamlet, in the "to be or not to be" speech, Hamlet describes death as "the Undiscovered Country from whose born no traveler returns."

And "borne" is an early modern English word meaning, like, boundary. What Hamlet is saying in this soliloquy is that death is a mystery, and people don't come back from it. Um, and I think that's like a really powerful use of a prepositional phrase, right? Um, all of this is describing "country" in a way that "undiscovered" is also doing, so "country" is being modified from both sides, which is really cool.

Uh, and it imbues the word "country" with a really strange power. But you have to be careful, uh, because you can set yourself up for a lot of ambiguity with prepositional phrases. You may remember this terrible joke from Mary Poppins. One man says, "I knew a man with a wooden leg named Smith." The other guy says, "But what was the name of his other leg?"

Uh, right? It's silly, but it's a good way to indicate where confusion can arise with prepositional phrases. You know, so I would say generally that the solution to a problem like this is to just put the "named Smith" part earlier in the sentence: "I knew a man named Smith who had a wooden leg." Maybe lose the prepositional phrase. That solves the problem.

What I'm trying to say is prepositional phrases are very powerful, but you have to be careful about how you use them because if you're not careful, you can create confusion or ambiguity. Anyway, you can learn anything. Sorry for the terrible cognac accent.

David out.