The Classification of Words

§ 344. Many prepositions are homonymous with adverbs (about, before, below, down, since, etc.), conjunctions (before, since, etc.), participles (regarding, concerning, etc.), lexico-grammatical word-morphemes (in, on, up, etc.).
§ 345. As elsewhere the lexico-grammatical meaning of prepositions is an abstraction from their individual lexical meanings. Let us compare the following combinations of words:
the book i n the bag,
the book о п the bag,
the book under the bag,
the book near the bag.
In all of them the preposition shows the relation of one noun to another, which reflects the relations of the correspond­ing substances in the world of reality. This meaning of 'rela­tions (of substances)' common to all prepositions is their lexico-grammatical meaning. But each preposition in the expressions above shows a different relation revealing thus its individual lexical meaning.
It is much more difficult to define the lexical meaning of a preposition than that of a noun or an adjective, because prepositions usually have very general, abstract meanings. Nevertheless the lexical meaning of a preposition is always there, however weak or general it may be. We may call pre­positions semi-notional words, but the term form-word often applied to them ^x is not adequate: they have not only form, but content as well.
§ 346. It is necessary to make some remarks in connection with the classification of prepositions according to their meaning into those of place, direction, time, etc.². When we say that the prepositions at or by have local meanings in at the window, by the window and temporal meanings in at 6 o'clock, by six o'clock we simply add the meanings of the neighbouring words to those of the prepositions. Origi­nally, a preposition like in is supposed to have had a concrete local meaning. But at present in is used with such a variety of words that it has a very vague and general meaning, some-
¹ See M. Qanshina, N. Vasilevskaya, op. cit, p. 249.
² See В. Л. Каушанская and others, op. cit., p. 209;
Л. С. Б a p x у д а р о в, Д. А. Ш т е л и н г, op. cit., p. 264.
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thing like 'inside some sphere'. That sphere may be local as in Moscow, temporal, as in January, abstract as in love, in thought, etc.
Prepositions, like in, at, on, by, etc, which are used with all kinds of nouns, so that the local, temporal, etc. meanings of the prepositional construction do not depend on the pre­position, but on the noun, may be called general prepo­sitions. There are some other prepositions which might be called special. They are used chiefly with nouns of certain meaning. For instance, the preposition till can be used with nouns like midnight, dawn, time, but not with window, town, place and the like. That shows that till has acquired a tem­poral meaning. The causal meaning of the special preposition because of is so strong that it determines the meaning of the prepositional construction irrespective of the noun. Cf. because of the time (place, love, John).
Here are some special prepositions; of time: before, after, during, since, till, until; of place: across, along, among, behind, below, beside, in front of; of cause: because of, in view of, owing to.
§ 347. The combinability of the preposition is rather pecul­iar. As a rule, it is followed by a noun or a noun equivalent with which it is closely connected. At the same time it is associated with some preceding notional word belonging to nearly any part of speech. We may speak of stable right-hand connections and variable left-hand connections.

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