Prepositions

Prepositions cannot be distinguished by any formal features. A list of prepositions will illustrate this point:

across, after, at, before, by, during, from, in, into, of, on, to, under, with, without

We can, say, however, that prepositions typically come before a noun:

across town after class at home before Tuesday by Shakespeare

for lunch in London on fire to school with pleasure

The noun does not necessarily come immediately after the preposition, however, since determiners and adjectives can intervene:

after the storm on white horses under the old regime

Whether or not there are any intervening determiners or adjectives, prepositions are almost always followed by a noun. In fact, this is so typical of prepositions that if they are not followed by a noun, we call them "stranded" prepositions:

Preposition	Stranded Preposition
John talked about the new film	This is the film John talked about

Prepositions are invariable in their form, that is, they do not take any inflections.

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