What syntactic elements can prepositional phrases in modern Chinese do?

Preposition phrases in modern Chinese can usually be used as adverbials, complements and attributes.

Prepositions cannot be used as predicates or the center of predicates alone, even if they form prepositional phrases, they can't be used as predicates, and are usually used as adverbials, complements and attributes. In a sentence, the predicate is a verb.

1, preposition as adverbial

Adverbials are used to modify or restrict verbs or adjectives, indicating the state, manner, time, place or degree of action.

For example:

Starting from the beginning of this month, the school began to implement a new schedule.

The preposition "cong" and the locative word "qi" in the sentence form a fixed preposition structure, indicating the starting point of time, and at the beginning of the sentence and the time noun "the beginning of this month" form a prepositional phrase as an adverbial of time.

2. Prepositions as complements

Complement is a combined component after verb or adjective, which supplements the result, degree, trend, possibility, state and quantity of predicate. Preposition phrases can act as complements.

For example:

I was born in Beijing.

Preposition phrase "in Beijing" as a complement.

3. Prepositions as attributes

Attributive is used to modify, limit and explain the nature and characteristics of nouns or pronouns. It is often represented by "de".

For example:

If you are outside, please come in quickly.

Among them, "external" modifies "person" as an attribute.

Extended data:

Preposition itself cannot be used independently, but can only be attached to other words to form a prepositional phrase, which acts as an attribute or adverbial or complement.

Prepositions are usually used before nouns, pronouns or noun phrases, and together with these words, they form an object-object structure, expressing words such as place, time, state, way, reason, purpose and comparison object. They can be used as attributes, adverbials and complements.

1, the subject-object structure mainly acts as an adverbial modifier verb or adjective. For example, "get off" and "be taller than him".

2. The object-object structure can be used as an attribute, but "de" should be added, such as "evaluation of historical figures" and "box on the table".

3. A few object-object structures can be used as complements, such as "working late into the night" and "sleeping in bed".

But the subject-object structure cannot be used as a predicate.

References:

Baidu Encyclopedia-Preposition (Chinese Preposition)