Prepositional Phrases Found in “The New York Times”

Abstract

This research, entitled Prepositional Phrases Found in The New York Times, examines the use of prepositional phrases in education related articles published in 2025 and 2026. The study aims to identify the types of complements that follow prepositional phrases and to explain their functions in formal journalistic writing. The grammatical analysis is guided by the theoretical framework presented in English Grammar: A University Course by Downing and Locke (2006). Data were collected by closely examining each article sentence by sentence to identify prepositional phrases. The identified phrases were then classified according to the types of complements they take and the functions they perform. A qualitative descriptive approach is applied, following the principles of qualitative research design proposed by Creswell (2009). The results show that the complements found in the Education section include nouns, pronouns, full noun groups, prepositions, wh-clauses, and -ing clauses. In contrast, adjectives and adverbs were not found to function as complements of prepositional phrases in the selected articles. This finding suggests that writers in formal journalistic contexts tend to avoid these structures in order to maintain clarity and grammatical accuracy. Overall, the findings indicate that prepositional phrases are a central feature of news discourse, as they contribute to the clear presentation of contextual information and support effective communication in formal journalistic writing.