前面 and 面前

[freefall]

我站在他前面。I stand in front of him.

我们在困难面前应该坚强。When faced with difficulty, we should be strong.

I'm wondering about the mechanics of 前面 and 面前 in these sentences. Is it as simple as saying that 前面 and 面前 are prepositions with 前面 meaning "in front of" and 面前 meaning "facing"? But at the picky grammatical level are they really prepositions? Or is this structure similar to 放在你们这里 when nimen is an appositive to zheli? What about the reversal of qian and mian and the change in meaning from "in front of" to "facing"? Is this part of a more encompassing structure? Thanks.

[HashiriKata]

It's a difficult question to answer properly!

Others may disagree but I think both of them are kind of nouns, and both of them means something like "in front of" (! Beware, I don't mean "in front of" is a noun!). The difference between them therefore is not their meaning or grammatical category, but it is the way they are used (=usage). Now, I'm waiting for someone good enough to unravel the difference in their usage!

[againstwind]

if there is another sentence:

我站在他面前。

Can you feel the nuance from 我站在他前面?

Well, simple explanation, i think, is 前面 as a noun emphasizing 'front' , whereas 面前 as a noun emphasizing 'facing' in the front.

So 我站在他前面 just tell us that I do stand in front of him, but perhaps my back faces to him . And 我站在他面前 doesn't only tell us that I stand in front of him, but also emphasizes that we must face to face.

As for your doubt if 前面 and 面前 are prepositions, i think it's better to consider them as nouns.

我站在他(的)前面。

我站在他的（面前）。

Or is this structure similar to 放在你们这里 when nimen is an appositive to zheli?

naturally, according to my view above, 他 shouldn't be the appositive to 前面 or 面前.

[qingfeng]

I'd say both ”前面” and “面前” in the first poster's examples are prepositions. The emphasizes are on 他 and 困难 respectively, so ”前面” and “面前” function as typical prepositions that describe and express a spatial relationship with the objects.

No, "他”、“困难”are not appositives to ”前面” and “面前”, because they don't mean the same thing.

[HashiriKata]

So 我站在他前面 just tell us that I do stand in front of him, but perhaps my back faces to him . And 我站在他面前 doesn't only tell us that I stand in front of him, but also emphasizes that we must face to face.

I think againstwind has done a good job in diffrentiating the use of 前面 and 面前. It may also be worth noting another difference: while 前面 is often associated with a concrete location, 面前 is often used not only with abstract nouns (example 1 below), but also in an abstract sense (example 2):

1. 荣誉面前不伸手，胜利面前不骄傲。

(One should be modest in the face of glory and not arrogant in the face of victory.)

2. 在父母面前，我永远是孩子。

(To my parents, I'm always a child.)

[againstwind]

while 前面 is often associated with a concrete location, 面前 is often used not only with abstract nouns (example 1 below), but also in an abstract sense (example 2)

Reasonable.

[Gulao]

In the case of 面前, it seems almost more senseible to me to think of 面 and 前 as separate ideas, where the "face" aspect of 面 is implied as the noun's face (literally or figuratively) and the 前 simply indicates that it is that noun's face's front. For 前面, I think of it as a single word meaning "in front of."