Contents introduction chapter I prepositional phrases and their use

participle Donning.]
News reported by the tabloids is often fictitious. [The participial phrase modifies
the noun News. The adverb phrase by the tabloids modifies the past participle
reported.]¹⁶
Absolute Phrase
Absolute phrase (also called nominative phrase) is a group of words including a noun or pronoun and a participle as well as any associated modifiers. Absolute phrase modifies (give information about) the entire sentence. It resembles a clause but it lack a true finite verb. It is separated by a comma or pairs of commas from the rest sentence.
Examples
He looks sad, his face expressing worry.
She was waiting for her friend, her eyes on the clock.
 John is painting a wall, his shirt dirty with paint.

CHAPTER II Analysis of prepositional phrases
II.1 Analysis
A prepositional phrase is phrase that starts with a preposition and ends with noun (or a pronoun)¹⁷. For example:

It is a little bit more complicated than shown above because the noun can be anything that plays the role of a noun. For example:

• 
  from her
  

(the "noun" is a pronoun)

• 
  from sleeping
  

(the noun is a gerund, i.e., a verbal noun)

• 
  from the man across the street
  

(the noun is a noun phrase)

• 
  from what he said
  

(the noun is a noun clause)
The words after the preposition (shown in bold above) are known as the object of a preposition. There will often be modifiers in the object of the preposition making it a noun phrase. For example:

• 
  with John
  

(There are no modifiers in this example. Compare it to the next example.)

• 
  with the wonderful John
  

(With the modifiers the and wonderful, the object of the preposition is now a noun phrase.)
Here is another example:

• 
  without trying
  

(There are no modifiers in this example. The object of the preposition is a noun. In this case, it's a gerund. Compare it to the next example.)

• 
  without overly trying
  

(With the modifier overly, the object of the preposition is a noun phrase.)