Meet the preposition | The parts of speech | Grammar | Khan Academy Video Lecture | Complete Course on English Grammar: Upgrade your Speaking & Listening - Personal Skills

hanck grammarians I want to talk about
prepositions but before I do I'm going
to draw you a little hamster is the
hamster is it a tiny bear who knows
we're just going to call it a hamster a
little little rodent type creature now
I'm going to use this critter to
establish what prepositions are and what
they do because in addition to there
being a hamster there's also going to be
this this box
so what prepositions do is they
establish relationships between stuff in
place and time so it can show it can
show us where things are when things are
and how things are let me let me
demonstrate so okay so using just this
hamster and this box we can move this
box around and talk about how the
hamster relates to the box right so
right now the box is under the hamster
let's write that down
right the box is under the hamster that
word under is a preposition because it's
establishing this relationship of where
it's connecting the box to the hamster
the box is under a hamster but if I move
it up like so now we can say the box is
over the hamster but let's get rid of
the box and let's imagine that our
hamster is having a midlife crisis and
our hamster decides it's going to go out
and it's going to splurge on a fabulous
new hat just an enormous top hat a
little band in the center just a big old
silly Abe Lincoln style stovepipe top
hat now another use for prepositions is
we can talk about when things are in
relation to each other so I could say
before
the hamster got the hat and after the
hamster got a hat right and these words
after and before expressed relationships
in time but another interesting thing
that prepositions can do is they can
also help express how something is or
how its what it's for what its use is
you know so we could say that you know
this hat is for parties or is for
wearing at parties oh and at also is a
preposition this hat is for wearing at
parties so this is the the how and this
part is the where so what's the purpose
of the Hat well we establish that with
the word for the hat is for wearing
where is it supposed to be worn at
parties that's the where we can also use
a word like of to express the the how
relationship and that's that's just sort
of to say what belongs to whom so we
could say you know that is the Hat of
the hamster that is the Hat of the
hamster so that's what prepositions are
in the most basic sense they can help
you figure out what the relationship is
between two things in time and space you
know or or how one thing relates to
another so you can figure out when where
and how using prepositions you can learn
anything Dave it out