Grammar

Question

IN the sentence:  We'll stay in the city for long.are the prepositional phrases in the city and for long?How is long an Oby/noun of the preposition?

Desk gray 361 · Accepted Answer

I propose a slight change to the idea of a "prepositional phrase" that agrees with that of the many old grammar books. Similar to a conjunction, a preposition is a word that connects two or more ideas in a sentence or phrase, the earlier word being the "antecedent" and the later word being the "consequent." The full prepositional phrase therefore comprises the antecedent + the preposition + the consequent. Most dictionaries and grammar books today only consider the preposition + the consequent as comprising the "prepositional phrase," but semantically, it should consider both terms. In the sample sentence, "We'll stay in the city for long," the first prepositional phrase includes the preposition "in,", which connects the terms "will stay" (the antecedent term) and "the city" (the consequent), so the complete prepositional phrase would be "will stay in the city." The second prepositional phrase includes the preposition "for," which connects the term "the city" (the antecedent) and "long" (the consequent), so the complete prepositional phrase is "the city for long."

If we only consider the term after the preposition (if the consequent is a noun or pronoun, it is in the objective case and can be called the object of the preposition), we are apt to lose site of the fact that the preposition is a connecting word, similar in some respects to a conjunction, which connects two or more terms, so both all of the terms should be considered when identifying the prepositional phrase.

CalifJim · Answer

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IN the sentence: We'll stay in the city for long.
are the prepositional phrases in the city and for long?
How is long an Oby/noun of the preposition?

In my experience 'for long' is only used in non-affirmative contexts, so I'd expect We won't stay in the city for long.

However, this is beside the point where your question is concerned.

There are two ways to look at this grouping 'for long'. First, we can say that it's simply an idiom, a fixed phrase, and the use of the adjective 'long' for the object of that preposition 'for' is a non-systemic usage.

Second, we can say that 'long' is a shortening of 'a long time'. (In fact, this is the phrase I expect in this affirmative sentence.) Then 'time' is the object of the preposition 'for'.

CJ

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