There are several prepositions which can be placed after an adjective. So I wonder which one should be chosen. Are they the same, or are there some nuances among them? Given a single sentence without context, how can a native speaker understand the sentence correctly? I want to know the process of understanding the different usages.
For example,
disappointed adj ~ (about/at sth); ~ (in/with sb/sth);sad or
dissatisfied because sb has failed, some desired event has not
happened, etc
- be disappointed about/at sb's failure
- I was disappointed with his performance.
- I'm disappointed in you: I expected you to win.
As you can see, after the adjective "disappointed", you can use different prepositions,like "about" "at" "with" "in". Are they the same? Which element can decide the usage of preposition?
How do the native speakers learn the preposition at the beginning?
Best Answer
The very short answer: they do it just the same way that you learned all that difficult grammar in your own mother tongue.
Slightly longer:
How does anyone learn their native language?
Well, according to linguists, they do not.
The process of getting to know how to speak your mother tongue is called acquisition, not learning.
Learning is what other people do when they learn the language as a second (or third, etc) language. They learn the rules, the grammar, and they try to apply them.
Young children subconsciously analyse the words and phrases they hear around them, and they build up a "grammar" in their head, as well as a dictionary, a thesaurus, enormous lists of collocations, etc. They don't actually sit down to study, they just absorb and analyse.
So a native speaker knows that he should say he works instead of he work, and even when he encounters a verb that he has never seen before, he knows the third person singular will get an -s in the simple present.
The amazing thing is that he knows that, even if maybe he does not know anything about grammar. Even if he doesn't know what a "verb" is, what "simple present is", or "third person singular". Even if he has never seen a grammar book, he will be able to correctly say he (new verb)s.
Just look around you at any young kids. You may think that your mother tongue is easy, because even little children speak it very well. But it's not. It's as easy or difficult as English is, and those kids (and you, when you were little) are doing what children everywhere do: they build up an understanding of the grammar of their mother tongue without even realizing it.
Ask a five-year old why he just conjugated that verb correctly, ask him in which grammar book he saw the rules for that, and at best you will get a blank stare.
You had discovered an enormous amount of grammar by the age of three, just like any kid, in any language.
This question reminds me of this old joke: