in English This thesis focuses on the spatial and temporal prepositional phrases (PP) and their positioning in French and Dutch. Both languages have different sentence structures, and it was therefore presumed that the positions of the PPs would vary in both languages. The purpose of this thesis was to do an analysis in this field, to describe the possible positions of spatial and temporal PPs and to compare them. The research was done within the functionalist theory of André Martinet. This theory is based on the fact that the main objective of language is communication and that people use various strategies to interpret messages on different levels. It also must be taken into account that various principles influence word order. Sentence structure, strategies and principles are factors that create a complex word order system must be considered when forming each sentence. On this basis, the purpose of this thesis is to describe these factors and demonstrate their usage through analysis of concrete, practical examples.