Are english prepositions grammatical or lexical morphemes ?

International audienceThis article will start from the very traditional assumption that it is necessary to classify prepositions in parts of speech. Without completely calling the very existence of this traditional class generally called “grammatical” or “syntactic” into question, we aim to reexamine the notion of grammaticality, as it seems most characteristic of prepositions, which are normally placed into the “grammatical” or “syntactic” category. Is it possible to consider the syntactic category of English prepositions as a homogeneous class, or is it better to regard it as a fundamentally heterogeneous class, made up of distinctive elements? Do we not need to posit the existence of a gradient from the more grammatical to the more lexical within the category of English prepositions? Or is it better to posit the existence of a gradient going from the more lexical to the more grammatical, as we will try to demonstrate in this article, especially if we take the evolution of language and the lexicalization process into account