Chapter 7

Complex prepositions of analogy and contrast in English

Complex prepositions of the form [P (Det) N P] and [(P) ADJ to] (e.g., in addition to, with respect to, in accordance with, due to, pursuant to) undoubtedly belong to formal registers that Basil Bernstein calls “elaborated code” and that John Lucy refers to as “intellectualized language” – they are much more frequent in written than in spoken language and they are more frequent in formal non-fiction writing (bureaucratic, academic and technical texts) than in informal non-fiction (newspapers) or fiction writing, and they (seem to) construct more explicit, complex and decontextualized relationships than simple prepositions, in line with the functional pressure on such registers to give preference to accuracy over communicative economy. As such, it is interesting to study the types of relations they express, and, crucially, the types of distinctions they make with regard to these relations. Among these relations, we find contrast (as opposed to, in contrast with/to, contrary to) and, less frequently, analogy (similar to, in comparison with, by analogy with/to). This offers an opportunity to study the way in which these relations, which are implicit in linguistic construal in a wide range of constructions and processes, are used explicitly to structure knowledge – if that is, in fact, what complex prepositions do. My chapter focuses on complex prepositions of contrast and analogy and use a wide range of corpus data to show what communicative functions these serve and whether and how the distinctions made possible by the existence of alternative forms and variants are exploited both in formal and informal language.