Functioning of prepositions in Modern English

Abstract

The aim of the study - highlight the interpretation of the meaning of the preposition in modern English and investigate the peculiarities of the use of prepositions in the modern English language. To achieve the goal, it was necessary to solve the following tasks: - trace the evolution of the understanding of the meaning of a preposition and approaches to determining the semantic essence of prepositions as a category of words; - analyze lexicographical sources and establish the criteria that are the basis of the description of all the meanings of the same preposition, identify the common semantic element of different descriptions of the meanings of the preposition in the dictionaries; - to reveal the semantic essence of each of the selected prepositions and to reveal the main regularities of their functioning in language and speech to express the relevant relations between physical objects in space and abstract concepts in time; - identify and describe the generalized types of relative objects that affect the definition of the meaning of the entire three-component prepositional combination; to determine the share of each type of meaning of the prepositional phrase (hereinafter PSS) within a continuous sample of the text.