Dave's ESL Cafe's Student Discussion Forums

[hela]

Dear teachers,

Would you please tell me which preposition do I have to use in this sentence and if "ANY" is compulsory?

"Were there ANY dinosaurs on / in Noah's Ark?"

What about : "We are no longer in / at the Stone Age!
How can I make the difference between "in" and "at"?

Thanks

[Christine123]

For the first example:
"Any" is not compulsory. Its use in questions is to quantify, but if you omit it, the meaning is more or less the same.

Both "on" and "in" are acceptable in this situation, and there is not much difference beyween the two, here. "On" is referring to being "on board" the boat. "In" is referring to being "inside," or "within" the boat. It is possible on board a boat, as it is possible to be inside a boat.

For the second example, "in" is the correct preposition. You can be inside, or within a time frame, but you cannot be at a time frame. One of the uses of "at" is the indication of the state or physical place of an object.

I hope that answers your question. Prepositions in English can be very tricky, and due to the fact that most prepositions have multiple meanings, it is usually more useful to try to learn whole prepositional phrases rather than trying to memorize and apply all the definitions of each individual preposition. Sometimes prepositions follow no rules at all, such as how it is appropriate to say "in the morning, in the afternoon," but we do not say "in the night," rather "at night." There is no grammatical reason for this, it is just how these prepositional phrases evolved. Also, prepositions do vary from dialect to dialect. American and British English will often use prepositions differently.

[hela]

Thank you Christine