While prepositions can be used in free combinations (i.e. with an independent meaning), it is a notable feature of the English language that they are often used in bound combinations, where their choice depends upon some other word (Downing & Locke 1992: 580). Such combinations are particularly troublesome for learners of English, even at an advanced level (Brala 2002: 1), one reason arguably being that, like other bound combinations, they are difficult to translate word by word from one’s mother tongue. This hypothesis was tested on the basis of contrastive corpus data for the preposition with and its direct equivalent in French avec. It was shown that, contrary to expectation, translational equivalence is higher for the bound uses of with than for its free uses. In other words, the English preposition is more likely to be translated by avec if it is part of a restricted multi-word expression. This result, however, can be mitigated by taking account of the type/token ratio. Many bound expressions with a word-for-word equivalent in French occur more than once, which has the effect of inflating the translational equivalence for bound uses.

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