Which underlined phrase is a prepositional phrase?

Test-takers were asked not to use their notes, books, or calculators.

Before passing out the test, the teacher asked students to close their books.

Neither of the tests this week had questions about the Pythagorean theorem.

The teacher and the students thought that the test took longer than expected.

A prepositional phrase has the following basic characteristics: usually begins with a preposition and ends with a noun, pronoun or gerund, functions as a unified part of speech, doesn't have a verb nor a subject.

Before is a preposition

Passing out the test is a gerund, which means that it acts as a noun in the sentence, and at the same time is the "object" of the proposition.

The whole phrase is a unified part of speech and doesn't have any verb nor subject.

jayilych4real jayilych4real · Answer 2 · 2021-11-11T11:08:28+01:00

The underlined phrase which is a prepositional phrase is:

B. Before passing out the test, the teacher asked students to close their books.

According to the given answer choices, we need to show the sentence which contains a prepositional phrase and how it functions in the sentence.

As a result of this, we can see that there is a prepositional phrase which is "Before passing the test" as it shows the time period before an action took place which is one function of the prepositional phrase in a sentence.

Therefore, the correct answer is option B