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There is a simple sentence below.

We prepared a picnic lunch and drove down by the river.

Is "down" a preposition or adverb in this sentence?

Plesase, let me know.

Araucaria - Him
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bak1936
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  • Are you asking whether the quote should be parsed with “drove down” or “down by the river”? – Lawrence Nov 03 '19 at 13:43

4 Answers4

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The easiest way to parse down by the river is to think of down by as a double preposition:

I can’t get out of going to the meeting.
They made a wall out of old tires.
She sat across from her father-in-law.
There’s a cabin up on the ridge.

KarlG
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  • Thanks for your answer!!. but I think that down might be adverb. – bak1936 Nov 04 '19 at 01:45
  • I don't think it's that simple. 'There’s a cabin upon the ridge' / 'There’s a cabin on top of the ridge' show compound prepositions. 'There’s a cabin up on the ridge' / 'There’s a cabin down on the ridge below us' seem to show what I'd call double preposition structures, perhaps deleted from 'There’s a cabin up there on the ridge'. – Edwin Ashworth Dec 13 '22 at 19:45
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In English Grammar: A University Course by Angela Downing & ‎Philip Locke is found this syntactic analysis on how prepositional phrases may be realised:

Realisations of the complement element of a prepositional phrase

The complement element of a PP is most typically realised by a nominal group, but it may also be realised by the classes of groups and clauses shown below. Simple nouns and pronouns, adjectives and adverbs are treated as 'groups' represented by the head:

  • noun groups:

at home / after which / on account of his age

  • adjectival groups:

in private / at last / for good

  • adverbial groups:

for ever / since when / until quite recently

  • prepositional phrases:

from out of the forest / except in here

  • (+ finite wh-clauses; wh- + to-infinitive clauses and -ing clauses)

[re-formatted]

So this would license at least the structure of [{down} by the river] as a prepositional phrase containing a prepositional phrase. This is really a device for adding two adverbial qualifiers in a condensed form: 'We drove alongside the river, which is down in the valley'.

'The mouse ran from under the sofa' and

'There is a cobweb up under the shelf'

use the same device for the same reason.

Note that 'He came down on Tuesday' must be analysed very differently; 'On Tuesday, he came down' shows that the temporal PP is quite distinct, quite separate from the preceding word 'down' in this case. You can't re-order the true 'double preposition' construction to say 'Under the shelf, there is a cobweb up.'

Here, 'down' would traditionally be classed as an adverb, but by many as an intransitive preposition (no matter which order the sentence was written in).

Edwin Ashworth
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We prepared a picnic lunch and drove down the road by the river.

. I think down is a preposlition because if we remove it , it becomes we drove the road which is meaningless.Besides, down is followed by a noun so it is preposition..By is clearly a preposition meaning by the side of .

He came in ( in adverb)

He came in/ into the room( preposition)

Here is a link which shows down as a preposition.

https://www.macmillandictionary.com/dictionary/british/down_1

Jvlnarasimharao
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A preposition usually has an object, whereas an adverb doesn't.

Araucaria - Him
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Ram Pillai
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