Collocations of verbs and prepositions
One of the funny quirks of the English language is to get used to which verbs are used with which prepositions. There are no rules which define these, you get used to them as you use the language more often. This is called a collocation, and it is one of many in the language.
Take for example the preposition 'against'; it is commonly used with the following verbs:
guard, rebel, lean, offend, war.
So one would guard against gluttony!
The soldiers rebelled against the Duke.
The jury leant against the arguments of the defence lawyer.
Similarly, you say
Petra is susceptible to influenza
not
Petra is susceptible for influenza
Some common collocations are shown below, this is not mine but comes from a page called www.pictaram.com, and as I make no profit from this blog, I show it below for the reader's convenience.
One of the funny quirks of the English language is to get used to which verbs are used with which prepositions. There are no rules which define these, you get used to them as you use the language more often. This is called a collocation, and it is one of many in the language.
Take for example the preposition 'against'; it is commonly used with the following verbs:
guard, rebel, lean, offend, war.
So one would guard against gluttony!
The soldiers rebelled against the Duke.
The jury leant against the arguments of the defence lawyer.
Similarly, you say
Petra is susceptible to influenza
not
Petra is susceptible for influenza
Some common collocations are shown below, this is not mine but comes from a page called www.pictaram.com, and as I make no profit from this blog, I show it below for the reader's convenience.
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