Prepositional Verbs, Verbs + Preposition - Learn English with Julia

In this lesson let's learn a comprehensive list of Prepositional Verbs with the prepositions: about, against, at, for, from, in, of, on, to, with...

Prepositional Verbs are slightly different to Phrasal Verbs: find out why in this video tutorial!

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Transcript of video:

Hello and welcome to this video entitled

Prepositional verbs

Prepositional verbs are also known as

verbs + preposition

They are very different

to phrasal verbs.

Why are they different?

Well a prepositional verb has

a grammatical preposition.

This means that the preposition is there

to introduce the direct object

and is not there to alter the meaning of the main verb.

In addition, prepositional verbs

are inseparable.

You can not say:

What do you excel?

You need the preposition to understand the sentence.

What do you excel at?

or

What did you apologise for?

and so on.

So they are inseparable

Finally, it is essential to learn the combinations

The combinations stem from common usage.

There aren't any clear rules that govern the use of prepositional verbs.

In some cases, a verb can work

with several prepositions, one, two or three different prepositions

and have the same meaning.

For example,

You can talk/speak about something

or,

You can talk/speak of something

The meaning is the similar.

the meaning is really identical in fact

and others like FIGHT

can be followed by different prepositions

and give a completely different meaning to the sentence.

For example,

They fight against abuse.

We are therefore in a negative context

They fight against something

and

They fight for freedom.

This is a positive context

Then we have this verb here: "arrive"

which is also quite peculiar

"arrive at" or "arrive in"

Never "arrives TO"*

I travel to...

I walk to...

However, ARRIVE can not be followed by TO

when we're talking about location

or changing location

you say: to arrive at the airport.

to arrive in London

If you hesitate between AT or IN,

I recommend you watch the video on prepositions

Otherwise, I highlighted some tricky words

here mainly because of its spelling

this is commonly misspelled word.

to separate

it's not an -E, it's an -A

and otherwise...

trust

I've underlined that also

Because we can say:

"You trust someone ∅"

But "trust someone with"

When you introduce an object you must use a preposition

and

to object

Here I've circled "OBJECT"

because it is said "to Object" (accented on the last syllable)

and not "To OBject"* (accented on the first syllable)

"OBject" (accented on the first syllable) is a name

and "To ObJECT" (accented on the last syllable) is a verb.

If you do not understand why

you are invited to watch the video on stress patterns

it is quite revealing

These are also common mistakes

"TO DEPEND" works only "ON"

"It depends ON the weather"

And "LISTEN"

"What are you listening TO?"

"I Listened TO a radio program"

or "show TV"

Not "LISTEN SOMETHING" *

Do not forget that they are inseparable

and that they need prepositions.

Otherwise, I think it's about just learning everything off by heart

and getting plenty of practice.

Thank you for watching!

And good luck with the interactive exercises.

Help us caption & translate this video!

[greyfish]

we need more awesome and useful videos like this. also phrasal verbs and idioms​ lessons. 👍

[gunso]

good explanation, very useful, thanks a lot ms Julia...but maybe u need to make ur explanation longer, I mean in a little bit more detail (y) 😊

[wwwolf]

Thanks very much for this video, Julia. It sent me off on a search about the differences in meaning between verbs with of vs. about. My god! Half a day later, I’m still not fully capable of explaining the difference between some of them. It’s amazing how native speakers learn such subtleties without being able to talk ‘about’ the differences. In other words, they know the language without necessarily knowing ‘about’ it. Now, if you know ‘of’ a good resource that clearly articulates the differences, I’d appreciate it if you recommended it to me. Thanks.