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Nouns in set expressions used without an article.
So a considerable number of nouns of different character when used in adverbial prepositional phrases have no article, e. g. by accident, by hand, by letter, by land, by sight, at hand, off hand, in detail, in person, on board, on foot, on tiptoe, at sea, to sea, on hand, on leave, on business, on holiday, etc. There is no article in a number of combinations consisting of a preposition + a noun + a preposition. Such set phrases are to be treated as compound prepositions: in addition to, in charge of, in contrast with, in regard to, in support of, in reply to, in connection with, on account of, in comparison with, in conformity with, in honour of, in memory of, in pursuit of, in favour of, in combination with, in answer to, on top of, in defiance of, with regard to, in recognition of, in return for, in place of, in relation to, in search of, by reason of, by way of, etc. I rushed through the passage in search of my mother. My father found himself in charge of a factory. However, in other set phrases built up on the same pattern the definite article is found: under the influence of, in the centre of, on the invitation of, by the side of, in the middle of, on the initiative of, under the pretence of, etc. There are no articles in so-called parallel structures such as from tree to tree, from house to house. These are free combinations as they are freely built up by the speaker with the help of the pattern “ from + N + to + N”, in which the same noun is repeated: He leaned back in his long chair and rolled from side to side with laughter. There are also set expressions among parallel structures, the most common of which are: arm in arm, hand in hand, man to man, face to face, shoulder to shoulder, from beginning to end, from north to south, from floor to ceiling, from right to left. At the end of the living-room there were bookshelves from floor to ceiling.
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