THE DISTINCTION OF THE USE OF ENGLISH PREPOSITIONS AND ADVERBIAL PARTICLES IN OSCAR WILDE’S STAR-CHILD

Abstract

Language is a group of part of speech. In English, part of speech is divided into eight classes: noun, verb, adjective, adverb, conjunction, pronoun, preposition and interjection. This thesis will discuss the use of English Preposition in some sentences in Oscar Wilde’s Star-Child. Preposition is an important class of function word. Prepositions are words which show the relationship between things, people or events. They often express relationship in space and time, but they also express many other kinds of relationship such as: place, purpose, possession, instrument, etc. Preposition has some patterns when it is placed in a sentence. They are Preposition + Noun/Pronoun, Preposition + -ing verb, and Preposition at the end of the sentence. English preposition is divided into three categories, simple preposition, compound preposition and preposition in –ing form. English preposition can be used as a pure preposition and as an adverbial particle. As a pure preposition, preposition indicates various relationships between words or phrases, such as showing place, time, condition, purpose, addition, comparison, instrument, means, manner, separation, partition, and cause. As an adverbial particle, preposition combine with a verb to form a new vocabulary item. When a verb is used with an adverbial particle the combination is called a phrasal verb. Adverbial particle can be written in separated way or non-separated way. The adverbial particle can be written in separated way when the object of phrasal verb is a noun or noun phrase, but the adverbial particle can not be separated from the verb when the phrasal verb does not have an object or the object of the phrasal verb is pronoun. The distinction of the use of preposition and adverbial particle is the function of preposition forms a basic meaning, but the adverbial particle forms a new meaning.