English prepositions

English prepositions are words – such as of, in, on, at, from, etc. – that function as the head of a prepositional phrase, and most characteristically license a noun phrase object (e.g., in the water). Semantically, they most typically denote relations in space and time. Morphologically, they are usually simple and do not inflect. They form a closed lexical category.

Many of the most common of these are grammaticalized and correspond to case markings in languages such as Latin.^: 48 For example, of typically corresponds to the genitive.