Most previous studies on prepositions have largely been discussed from the perspective of a polysemy network or have focused on featuring the geographical representations of individual prepositions. This study analyzed data containing [PREP the NOUN of ] patterns with six different prepositions (PREP) retrieved from the British National Corpus. In the sequences of words retrieved quantitatively from the corpus, we found the NOUNs shared by different prepositions and the semantic concepts denoted by these nouns. More importantly, we also showed the different degrees of literal and metaphorical uses, which increase one's understanding of different prepositions when they appear under the same parameter.