This section concentrates on multi-word expressions that have the ability to act as prepositions, coordinators and subordinators. We discriminate between two-word expressions consisting of a prepositon preceded by an adverbial (outside of), a subordinator (because of) or a preposition/subordinator (except for) and three-word expressions comprising a sequence of preposition-noun-preposition (on the verge of, in face of, in spite of). The two-word as well as the three-word unit group have in common that they comprise a wide range of expressions varying from established prepositions/subordinators/coordinators to collocations that in many contexts act as prepositions.

It was - to some extent - possible to make a list of two-word expressions which are to be regarded as prepositions. They are only expressed by their own nodes in the a-layer. In the tectogrammatical representation they are associated to their governing node as auxrf's. The list is given below.

NB that for a two-word sequence to be recognized as preposition none of its components may be a verb particle! This is to be checked in the phrase-structure PTB-tree.

The sequences marked with an asterisk comprise adjectives. They are not to be regarded as prepositions when they can be regarded as attributes, e.g.:

As the line between collocations with prepositional function and complex prepositions is especially fine in the three-word combinations, we treat all these expressions in the same way, unless they already had been tagged as prepositions in the Penn Treebank and thus automatically made to auxrf's during the conversion. Instead of explicitly listing expressions recognized as complex prepositions, which then would not be present as nodes in the tectogrammatical representation, we decided to give the nominal part of the three-word expression its own tectogrammatical node. The surrounding prepositions are attached to it as its auxrf's. The node will get the functor SM ("subjunction modifier"). The node governed by SM gets the appropriate functor according to the meaning of SM. Only the obvious prepositions in spite of and in order to have been treated as regular prepositions/subordinators.

For instance, in the sentence

the expression in the face of will be governed by the effective root (be) and will have the functor SM. The word dominance, governed by this SM, will have the functor REG, according to SM's meaning. This is a preliminary annotation whose purpose is to gather all expressions with the structure preposition-noun-preposition in the data that appear as ad hoc prepositions in order to be able to find a systematic resolution for this particular phenomenon.

Figure 7.4. Contexts in which two-word expressions are not to be regarded as prepositions

Janice has been together with John four years now.

Figure 7.5. Contexts in which two-word expressions are not to be regarded as prepositions

Sources close to the CEO say he is ready to make a deal.

Figure 7.6. Subjunction modifier (SM)

But maintaining U.S. influence will be difficult in the face of Japanese dominance in the region.

A few criteria have been set to identify SM's:

Analogically to two-word sequences, it is mainly to be checked whether the given expression really acts as preposition. It is not the case in multi-word predicates, e.g.:

The verbs stay, put and bring are used as support verbs and the word contact denotes an event of X contacting Y. Therefore it is expected to keep its valency frame, which results in and therefore it cannot be regarded as preposition. The phrase in contact, into contact can yet be used as preposition when it does not denote an event, typically with inanimate complementations and verbs that usually do not apear as support verbs:

In concrete cases the decision whether to regard the given sequence as a preposition or as part of a multi-word predicate is up to the annotator. Ambiguity arises especially when the preposition-like expression seems to fit into the verbal frame. Sequences that fit into the governing verb's frame are expected to be borderline cases. The typical SM's are not eligible for being inner participants of a verb:

This list has been primarily compiled on the basis of A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language (Quirk, Greenbaum, Leech and Svartvik, 2004). Besides, we use the lexicon of complex prepositions by Klégr, 2002: English Complex Prepositions of the Type in spite ofand Analogous Sequences - a Study & Dictionary. Yet not all preposition-noun-preposition sequences listed by Klégr are automatically assigned the functor SM in all contexts (as already mentioned with multi-word predicates). The following example shows a sentence where the preposition-noun-preposition sequence is semantically related to the event presented by the verb as well as to the subject of the sentence. For more details on ambiguous dependencies see Section 1.3, “Ambiguous dependency”.

... he last sailed upon it in charge of .MANN a steamer's course.PAT.Fig. 7.8

Figure 7.7. Subjunction modifier

Her son was happily playing at the family home in contradiction of a prognosis 12 years ago that he was not 'worth treating'.

Figure 7.8. Subjunction modifier

He last sailed upon it in charge of a steamer's course.