Talk:unlike

Preposition?
The usex "[it is] unlike" seems to justify the adjective, not a preposition. Mglovesfun (talk) 14:16, 25 October 2010 (UTC)


 * Unlike + complement is also used adverbially:
 * http://books.google.com/books?id=cyMNAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA78&dq=unlike
 * This was surely a new Eoin, this man who talked unlike anything she had heard in her life before.
 * and it's pretty unusual for an adjective to take a prepositionless noun as a complement (though it's not completely unheard of; cf. ).
 * But given that, even in this sort of use, it can be modified by and other such adverbs, I'm guessing that — as you say — it's more an adjective than anything else.
 * The OED gives it as an adjective/noun, as a verb, and as an adverb, but not as a preposition.
 * —Ruakh TALK 14:40, 25 October 2010 (UTC)
 * CGEL shows it as both adjective and preposition. The preposition usex should be removed. I have a citation that shows prep + wh-clause. DCDuring TALK 15:15, 25 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Re: your second and third sentences: I wonder if we're miscommunicating a bit. In an analysis of "X is unlike Y" such as the OED's, whereby unlike is an adjective, Y is the complement of unlike, and "unlike Y" is modifying X. It's just like "X is different from Y", where Y can be any sort of nominal, the only difference being that unlike construes its complement directly. The OED's analysis would therefore treat your 1926 cite as a use of the adjective, and your 1999 and 2009 cites as uses of the adverb. Since the CGEL shows it as a preposition, I'm on board with keeping the ===Preposition=== section, but maybe a usage note is in order? —Ruakh TALK 17:32, 25 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Would OED then say that "like" as adverb took a clause as complement? Is it a "conjunctive adverb"? That doesn't seem to simplify anything.
 * The preposition vs. adjective tests that CGEL has are: [Square brackets contain bits of my interpretation.]
 * Ps, not Adjs, can occur was head of non-predicate adjunct in a clause [but some Adjs have complements and may look like (!) ]. [CGEL allows no-complement prepositions, which many call adverbs.]
 * PPs cannot occur as complement to become:
 * Adjs are modifiable by "very" and "too" [PPs would require something like "much": "He is very much on top of the problem."]
 * Central prepositions allow NP complements, whereas adjs do not
 * Central prepositions accept modification by right: and straight:
 * Ps taking NP complements can normally be fronted along with their complement in relative and interrogative constructions.
 * Normally 4 is the source or confirmation of a native speaker's understanding of whether something is a preposition, but unlike as an adjective takes a complement. I was having trouble finding verbs that are not sometimes interpreted as copulas that collocate with a "like" phrase for test 1. Tests 2 and 3 require some fine semantic distinctions. Test 5 doesn't seem appropriate semantically. Which left me with Test 6. (1999 and 2009).
 * I think I now have a usage that meets test 1. DCDuring TALK 19:06, 25 October 2010 (UTC)
 * I noticed that the gloss "different from" doesn't work for the non-predicate PPs, which are very much like manner adverbs. "Differently from" seems more natural to me. The clausal complements don't work with "differently from". "In contrast with" or "different from" seem OK, though "different from" seems too adjectival. Should the sense by split as the glosses seem to differ by type of complement? DCDuring TALK 19:29, 25 October 2010 (UTC)
 * In general, I don't think we should have separate senses for adjectival and adverbial uses of prepositions, any more than, in general, we should have separate senses for attributive and head-of-noun-phrase uses of nouns. —Ruakh TALK 20:03, 25 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Perhaps. But we lose the desideratum of substitutability. MW has multiple senses.
 * Re: "Would OED then say that 'like' as adverb took a clause as complement? Is it a 'conjunctive adverb'?": More or less. It includes that use in its “adv. (quasi-prep., conj.)” section, with the definition “Used as conj.: = ‘like as’, as.”
 * (It bears note that the OED tends to base its analyses on historical and etymological development, at least in part, whereas the CGEL makes an effort to give the analysis that best fits present-day English with absolutely no regard for past usage. I think you'll agree that we shouldn't follow the OED slavishly; but we obviously can't follow the CGEL slavishly either, because we cover >500 years' worth of English. More, if you listen to Widsith. Both are very important and useful guides, though.)
 * I don't totally understand this one. :-/
 * gets four independent relevant hits.
 * and get tons of hits. ( and  also get some, but not nearly as many.)
 * O.K., on this front it's clearly preposition-like.
 * I don't think you can blame semantics for this. "In the center" and "central(ly)" have similar semantics, but "right in the center" works and *"right central(ly)" doesn't. That said, gets two independent hits, both of which seem relevant. ( gets none, but that one I will let you blame semantics for.)
 * P-fronting of "unlike" seems to be pretty rare — the first several pages of find no examples — but  does turn up a fair number of examples. (Only in relative clauses. I crafted a number of searches trying to find examples where it's fronted in an interrogative construction, but they found nothing relevant.)
 * —Ruakh TALK 19:59, 25 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Wide divergence of treatment in dictionaries. MW has it as conjunction, adjective, and preposition. They have more senses than we do. My Longmans DCE as as preposition a sense that CGEL calls adjectival. I don't thing Cambridge American follows CGEL, either.
 * And we still lack the "unlike in" collocaton. "Unlike in dictionaries, there is a rationale for classification in grammar books." This can be interpreted as an ellipsis for something like "Unlike [what appears] in dictionaries, ....". DCDuring TALK 19:45, 25 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Is "unlike in" a specifically important collocation? For example, is it more "set" than, say, "unlike with"? —Ruakh TALK 20:01, 25 October 2010 (UTC)
 * It is a usage point mentioned in Garner's and MWDEU. DCDuring TALK 22:02, 25 October 2010 (UTC)


 * Consider the following as possible subsenses of the preposition, the question being whether they really represent an adjective sense.
 * different from
 * a landscape unlike any other ~ The landscape was unlike any other.
 * not characteristic of
 * it was unlike him to be late ~ To be late was unlike him.
 * in a different manner from
 * She spoke clearly, unlike the others. ~ ...differently from the others
 * The last seems clearly to be a preposition, making a prepositional phrase that functions as a manner adverb, not functioning as a predicate. Note, however that "very" could appear before "unlike" almost as easily as "very much".
 * The other two seem like adjective uses to me. Note that the usage examples for both suffer from the defect that MG identified. The first more obviously and adjective:
 * Las Vegas became a city (very) unlike any other.
 * "Any other" would seem to be filling a mandatory NP complement slot of the adjective "like" in this sense. The second one seems unnatural with "become", but CGEL also offers "seem" (and "make"):
 * To be late seemed (very) unlike him.
 * They certainly don't accept "right" and "straight" as modifiers. I also can't make those senses fit the relative or interrogative fronting tests. Perhaps someone else can.
 * Thus, I conclude that, in contrast with worth:, which does not form PPs that function adverbially, "like" is a preposition, but not with the senses "different from" and "not characteristic of", which are adjective senses. This would put us at odds with MW (from whose "unlike" preposition entry the above senses were taken), Longmans, and other dictionaries that I have looked at. Were it not for the explicit criteria that CGEL provides, I would not waste time disagreeing with so many authorities. DCDuring TALK 01:07, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

RFV discussion
Verb sense. Obviously a neologism, but perhaps one which meets our criteria. -Atelaes λάλει ἐμοί 01:02, 20 June 2010 (UTC)
 * I have added and cited a sense "dislike", which I discovered in the course of attempting to cite the senses originally challenged. Accordingly, the RfV is now two rfv-senses. I am skeptical that there are two separate attestable senses. I expect that we will have to use usenet to attest to the RfVed senses or a merged sense. DCDuring TALK 10:44, 20 June 2010 (UTC)
 * I found only one mentiony citation from William Safire. There might be something on usenet, but not for forms "unliked" or "unliking". More creativity required in searching. DCDuring TALK 11:25, 20 June 2010 (UTC)

RFV failed, senses removed. The Facebooky sense had two cites, both now at Citations:unlike (one being the mentiony Safire cite that DCDuring mentions, though it's actually from Ben Zimmer). Besides those two, I found one other relevant use on Usenet, but it's playing with this sense rather than quite being in this sense, and I didn't feel comfortable using it. —Ruakh TALK 19:18, 15 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Usage has picked up in the last 6 months. I have added two cites. It is still often used in inverted commas. DCDuring TALK 19:49, 15 January 2011 (UTC)


 * Thanks. I checked the last seven months of Usenet and didn't find anything new; it didn't occur to me to try the last six months of Google News Archive. Unstriking. —Ruakh TALK 20:38, 15 January 2011 (UTC)

RFV passed. —Ruakh TALK 00:49, 26 January 2011 (UTC)

Adverb &rarr; Preposition
Stanford Parser's parsing for quotation "He walked unlike other men.":

(ROOT (S (NP (PRP He)) (VP (VBD walked)     (PP (IN unlike) (NP (JJ other) (NNS men)))) (. .)))

PP = Prepositional Phrase (functioning, as a whole, like an adverb.)

IN = Preposition or subordinating conjunction. (Here it would be a preposition since it heads a PP.) &mdash;AugPi 15:21, 31 May 2012 (UTC)

Stress on first syllable?
In the sense "unlike my brother, I like sport", isn't the first syllable stressed? Equinox ◑ 04:17, 7 March 2019 (UTC)