Question

Complete the sentence with the most suitable word.
 Air pollution is responsible for the spread_______ bronchitis.

Answer 1

Hint: A preposition is used to form a relation between one word with another word, mostly a verb with a noun.

Complete step-by-step answer:

From the hint given to us, we know that a preposition is used to link one word with another word in a sentence. It is a class of words that are usually placed before a noun and hence, called a preposition. It is a closed class of words, which means, no new prepositions can be added to the list of prepositions that already exist. Now, that we know what prepositions are we shall be analyzing the given sentence.
We observe that the sentence that has been given to us has a verb before the blank and noun after the blank. Spread is a verb and bronchitis is a noun. Thus, we can say that the missing word is a preposition.
‘Of’ is a preposition that is used to indicate that the word coming before ‘of' is a subset of the word that comes after ‘of’. We observe in the given sentence that ‘spread’ is a subset of ‘bronchitis’. Hence, we can say that the correct preposition that can be used to fill the blank is ‘of’.

Note: It is to be noted that a preposition is usually placed between a noun and a verb. It is used to establish a relationship between two given words. It is also used to indicate the spatial location of an object with respect to another object. A preposition is a closed category of words, that is, no new preposition can be added to the list of prepositions that are already there in the English language.