The present corpus-based study deals with eight sets of rivalling prepositions in verb-dependent prepositional phrases. The two or three members of these sets, though equivalent in specific uses, differ in terms of functional explicitness. For instance, in directional uses, into can be regarded as more explicit than in. The main objective is to demonstrate for each of these sets that, in line with the Complexity Principle, the more explicit items are favoured in more complex grammatical environments. The contexts under scrutiny include those produced by passivisation, Heavy NP Shift, object relativisation, the use of full object NPs rather than personal pronouns, and preposition stranding. Thus, we observe that – compared with basic active clauses – preposition stranding in the active induces increased shares of the more explicit prepositions in question. Predictably, even higher degrees of prepositional explicitness are found with the combination of preposition stranding and passivisation. Also, it is shown that Heavy NP Shift tends to trigger greater proportions of the more explicit prepositions than object relativisation. The observed tendencies hold for Present-day English and earlier stages of English as well as for morphologically related and unrelated rival prepositions.

中文翻译：

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复杂性原则与竞争对手介词一起使用

目前基于语料库的研究处理了八组在依赖动词的介词短语中相互竞争的介词。这些集合的两个或三个成员，虽然在特定用途上是相同的，但在功能明确性方面有所不同。例如，在定向使用中，进入可以认为比在. 主要目标是为这些集合中的每一个证明，根据复杂性原则，更明确的项目在更复杂的语法环境中受到青睐。受到审查的上下文包括那些由被动化、重 NP 转移、宾语相对化、使用完整宾语 NP 而不是人称代词和介词搁置产生的语境。因此，我们观察到——与基本的主动从句相比——主动中的介词绞合会导致所讨论的更明确介词的份额增加。可以预见的是，通过介词绞合和被动化的结合，可以发现甚至更高程度的介词显性。此外，与对象相对化相比，Heavy NP Shift 倾向于触发更大比例的更明确的介词。