Abstract

The discussion on complex prepositions has been centered on the string whose structure is preposition plus nominal plus preposition (PNP). However, there are other strings whose internal structures are quite distinct from the above and which are undergoing the process of grammaticalization and should be treated as single grammatical components, i.e. complex prepositions, in given circumstances where they appear. Three of those are up and above, down and below, and from top to bottom and across. They all share one characteristic that they have and in the second final position before the string final prepositions. They all appear in almost every circumstance where a single word preposition may appear. In addition, they all can be used as prepositional adverb which is a prominent major derivational use of single word prepositions.

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