Preposition Group As Word Complex

Matthiessen (1995: 626):

Note that adverbial group is treated quite broadly here; it includes conjunctions and continuatives as well as adverbs at Head. In IFG, adverbial groups and conjunction groups are distinguished. Here they are just taken as more delicate types of adverbial group. IFG also recognises a prepositional group. Here groups of prepositions are simply treated as complexes of prepositions at word rank (paratactic - e.g., extending: above —> and below the surface; enhancing: from —> beyond the mountains).

Blogger Comments:

To be clear, this treatment has the advantage of acknowledging the hybrid nature of the prepositional phrase, with one element realised by a unit (complex) at word rank, and the other element realised by a unit (complex) at group rank, and also of economising the rank scale, since it proposes just a single class of form at group/phrase rank for the word class 'preposition'.