Similarities between English predicative prepositional phrases and adjective phrases

Abstract

This paper is aimed at identifying which are the main similarities between English predicative prepositional phrases and adjective phrases. First of all, predicative PPs are defined as those groups of words which are headed by a preposition and which perform the function of subject complement; such is the case of “She first fell in love with Will when she was eighteen, and she adores him still” (ICE-GB:W2F-019 #47:1). These structures will be described from the morphological, syntactic, semantic, and socio-pragmatic points of view and examples will be provided highlighting the similarities between these two types of phrases. Morphologically speaking, rather than classifying different words as “adjectives” as opposed to other word classes, a gradation should be established so that certain units are “central adjectives” whereas others are considered as “peripheral”, depending on the number of characteristics they share. It is also possible to describe different predicative prepositional phrases along that continuum. From the syntactic point of view, many adjective phrases as well as some prepositional phrases can occur in both attributive and predicative positions, thus performing the functions of subject complements and premodifiers of the head of a noun phrase, respectively. As far as semantics is concerned, the fact that certain prepositional phrases can act as subject and object complements, among other functions, proves that they convey meanings which are similar to those of adjectives. Thus “in the doldrums” and “on cloud nine” can be replaced by “depressed” and “very happy”, respectively. As for socio-pragmatics, sometimes the prepositional structures are selected because they allow speakers to express subtle nuances which may not be conveyed by the adjective phrases available for those meanings. This is the case of “in La La Land”, defined as “silly or unreasonable” but also labelled as “informal”.