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He was looking at something?
What he was looking at?
In the latter the complement at, namely what occurs in initial position in what is for this so reasons.
It is common knowledge that prepositions are a most important element of the structure of many languages, particularly those which like modern English, have no developed case system in their nominal parts of speech. Prepositions is a words governing noun or pronoun the expressing latters relation to another words.
It is sometimes said that prepositions express the relations between words in a sentence, so this is taken as a definition of the meaning of prepositions.4 If true, this would imply that they do not denote any relations existing outside the language.5 However, this is certainly not true, so two or three simple examples will show it. If we compare two sentences:
The book is lying on the table so the book is lying under the table
So ask ourselves what do the preposition express here, it will at once be obvious that they express relations between the book so the table. The difference in the situations described in the two sentences is thus an extra linguistic difference expressed by means of language, namely by prepositions. It would certainly be quite wrong to say that the prepositions merely express the relation between the words book so the table, as the defection quoted above would imply. The same may be said about a number of other sentences. Compare, for instance, the two sentences.
He will come before dinner so he will come after dinner. It is absolutely clear that the prepositions denote relations between phenomena in the extra linguistic world, not merely relation between the word come so the dinner. We must add that there are case in which a preposition does not express relation between extra linguistic phenomena but merely serves as a link between words. take, for instance, the sentence: This depends on you.
Here we can not say that the preposition on has any meaning of its own. This is also clear from the fact that no other preposition could be used after the verb depend preposition upon, which is to all intents so purposes a stylistic variant of on. Using modern linguistic terminology, we can say that the preposition on is predicted by the verb depend. The same may be said about the expression characteristic of him. If the adjective characteristic of him. If the adjective characteristic is followed by any prepositional phrase at all the preposition of must be used, which means that it is predicted by the word characteristic. Returning now to our example: the book is lying on the table so the book is lying under the table, we must of course say that neither the prepositions on nor under is predicted by the verb lie.6
The choice of the prepositions would of course depend on the actual position of the book in space with reference to the table. Similarly, if we are given then sentence: he will come. … the performance the dots may replaced by preposition before, during, after, according as things as stso. 7
The preposition is traditionally defined as a word expressing relations between words in the sentence, e.g. Mary sent her photograph to John. The preposition to, as used in the sentence, relates John, the Recipient, to the verb send. The weakness of the traditional definition is that it does not allow us to distinguish prepositions from subordinating conjunctions. Cf.
She never saw him after the concert. vs. She never saw him after he left town.
(A. Sillitoe’s “Key to the door”)
In traditional analysis, the preposition is used with the noun phrase, not with the verb phrase. Such being the case, after in the first sentence is a preposition, while before in the second sentence is a conjunction. In other words, the status of after is determined by the linguistic status of the following phrase. Accepting this approach, we shall have to treat the two uses of after as homonyms. A new approach to prepositions so subordinating conjunctions is to treat the two traditional categories as prepositions. The said scholars include in the preposition category all of the subordinating conjunctions of traditional grammar with the exception of whether so that: when, until, although, before, after, since, etc.. Prepositions are taken as heads of phrases so are comparable to verbs, nouns, adjectives, so adverbs which also function as heads.8 To prove their point, the scholars present the following examples:
1. a. I remember the accident. b. I remember you promised to help.
2. a. He left after the accident. b. He left after you promised to help.
The scholars argue that remember remains the same part of speech despite the difference in the complementation.9 The same holds for (2): left remains a verb although in sentence (2a) it is complemented by a noun phrase so in sentence (2b) by a verb phrase. Hence “There is no reason to hsole after in (2) any differently: it can be analysed as a preposition in both cases”.10 This approach to prepositions makes it possible to combine prepositions so subordinating conjunctions into one class so thus solve the problem of the discrimination of prepositions so conjunctions. Prepositions are peculiar to both synthetic so analytic languages. However, if in synthetic languages they are generally employed to realize circumstantial functions in analytic languages, like English, prepositions are used to realize both grammatical so circumstantial functions (e.g. John’s marriage to Mary vs. John’s wedding-party in the Town Hall). Being a predominantly analytic language, English has developed an adequate compensatory mechanism. One such mechanism is the preposition, which historically derives from adverbs, nouns, so participles.11
Structurally, prepositions fall into two categories: simple, or one-word, prepositions (in, on, for, to, about, after, etc.) so composite, or two- or three- word, prepositions (ahead of, because of, according to; by means of, at the cost of, with reference to, etc.).
Functionally, prepositions can be divided into grammatical, so non-grammatical (spatial so non-spatial). Grammatical prepositions have no identifiable meaning independent of the grammatical construction in which they occur. Consider:
1. He was interviewed by the police.
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