Chapter published in:
Explorations in English Historical Syntax
Edited by Hubert Cuyckens, Hendrik De Smet, Liesbet Heyvaert and Charlotte Maekelberghe
[Studies in Language Companion Series 198] 2018
► pp. 179–202

Free adjuncts in Late Modern English

A corpus-based study

| University of Vigo
The present paper focuses on the English free adjunct construction in Late Modern English based on data from the Penn Parsed Corpus of Modern British English (PPCMBE1). Data from this analysis will be compared to information available in existing studies on Early Modern and Present-day English. The findings based on my own data analysis and the data in earlier studies confirm a decrease in the frequency of the free adjunct construction from EModE to LModE and an stabilization from LModE to PDE. Verbal free adjuncts show an increasing preference for present-participial forms and they tend to be placed in final position. Semantically, most verbal free adjuncts are controlled by the subjects of the main clauses and their semantic contribution to the sentence is, in Kortmann’s (1991: 121) terms, “most informative”. Finally, free adjuncts are typically not augmented.
Keywords: free adjuncts, adverbial, dependency, control
Published online: 13 August 2018
https://doi.org/10.1075/slcs.198.08bou
References

References

Bäcklund, Ingegerd
1984  Conjunction-headed Abbreviated Clauses in English . Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis [ Studia Anglistica Upsaliensia 50]. Uppsala: Almqvist & Wiksell.Google Scholar
Berent, Gerald P.
1973 Absolute constructions as ‘subordinate clauses’. In You Take the High Node and I’ll Take the Low Node: Papers from the Comparative Syntax Festival, Claudia Corum, Cedric Smith-Stark & Ann Weiser (eds), 147–154. Chicago IL: Chicago Linguistic Society.Google Scholar
Beukema, Frits H.
1982 On the internal structure of free adjuncts. In Linguistics in the Netherlands 1982, Saskia Daalder & Marinel Gerritsen (eds), 71–82. Amsterdam: North-Holland.Google Scholar
Bouzada-Jabois, Carla & Pérez-Guerra, Javier
2014 Regularising the nonfinite periphery in English: Absolutes, free adjuncts and constructionalisation in Modern English. Paper delivered at the 38th International Conference of AEDEAN, Alcalá de Henares, 12–14 November.
Breivik, Leiv Egil & Swan, Toril
1994 Initial adverbials and word order in English with special reference to the Early Modern English Period. In Studies in Early Modern English, Dieter Kastovsky (ed.), 11–43. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Chafe, Wallace
1984 How people use adverbial clauses. In Proceedings of the Tenth Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society, Claudia Brugman & Monica Macaulay (eds), 437–449. Berkeley CA: Berkeley Linguistics Society.Google Scholar
Culpeper, Jonathan & Kytö, Merja
2010 Early Modern English Dialogues: Spoken Interaction as Writing. Cambridge: CUP.Google Scholar
Curme, George O.
1947 English Grammar. New York NY: Barnes & Noble.Google Scholar
Declerck, Renaat
1991 A Comprehensive Descriptive Grammar of English. Tokyo: Kaitakusha.Google Scholar
De Smet, Hendrik
2010 English -ing-clauses and their problems: The structure of grammatical categories. Linguistics 48(6): 1153–1193. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
2014 Constrained confusion: The gerund/participle distinction in Late Modern English. In Late Modern English Syntax, Marianne Hundt (ed.), 224–238. Cambridge: CUP. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Dik, Simon C.
1997 The Theory of Functional Grammar, Part 2: Complex and Derived Constructions. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Fonteyn, Lauren & van de Pol, Nikki
2016 Divide and conquer: The formation and functional dynamics of the Modern English ing-clause network. English Language and Linguistics 20(2): 185–219. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Hasselgård, Hilde
2010 Adjunct Adverbials in English. Cambridge: CUP. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Haspelmath, Martin
1995 The converb as a cross-linguistically valid category. In Converbs in cross-linguistic perspective: Structure and Meaning of Adverbial Verb Forms – Adverbial Participles and Gerunds, Martin Haspelmath & Ekkehard König (eds), 1–55. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Huddleston, Rodney & Pullum, Geoffrey K.
2002 The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language. Cambridge: CUP.Google Scholar
Killie, Kristin & Swan, Toril
2009 The grammaticalization and subjectification of adverbial -ing (converb clauses) in English. English Language and Linguistics 13: 337–363. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Kortmann, Bernd
1991 Free Adjuncts and Absolutes in English: Problems of Control and Interpretation. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
1995 Adverbial participial clauses in English. In Converbs in cross-linguistic perspective: Structure and Meaning of Adverbial Verb Forms – Adverbial Participles and Gerunds, Martin Haspelmath & Ekkehard König (eds), 189–237. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Kroch, Anthony, Santorini, Beatrice & Diertani, Ariel
(comp.) 2010 Penn Parsed Corpus of Modern British English.Google Scholar
Kruisinga, Etsko
1932 A Handbook of Present Day English, Vol. II: English Accidence and Syntax 3. Groningen: P. Noordhoff.Google Scholar
Pérez-Guerra, Javier
1999 Historical English Syntax: A Statistical Corpus-based Study on the Organisation of Early Modern English Sentences. Munich: Lincom.Google Scholar
Pérez-Guerra, Javier & Bouzada-Jabois, Carla
2015 Patterning verbal absolutes and free adjuncts in Contemporary English, with a grain of history. Paper delivered at the 6th Biennial International Conference on the Linguistics of Contemporary English (B-ICLCE 6), Madison, WI, 19–23 August.
Pérez Quintero, María Jesús
2002 Adverbial Subordination in English: A Functional Approach. Amsterdam: Rodopi.Google Scholar
Quirk, Randolph, Greenbaum, Sidney, Leech, Geoffrey & Svartvik, Jan
1985 A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language. London: Longman.Google Scholar
Río-Rey, Carmen
2002 Subject control and coreference in Early Modern English free adjuncts and absolutes. English Language and Linguistics 6(2): 309–323. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Stump, Gregory T.
1985 The Semantic Variability of Absolute Constructions. Dordrecht: Reidel. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Thompson, Sandra A.
1983 Grammar and discourse: The English detached participial clause. In Discourse Perspectives on Syntax, Flora Klein-Andreu (ed.), 43–65. New York NY: Academic Press.Google Scholar
van de Pol, Nikki & Cuyckens, Hubert
2013 Gradualness in change in English augmented absolutes. In Synchrony and Diachrony: A Dynamic Interface [Studies in Language Companion Series 133], Anna Giacalone Ramat, Caterina Mauri & Piera Molinelli (eds), 341–366. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Visser, Fredericus Theodorus
1972 An Historical Syntax of the English Language, Part two: Syntactical Units with One Verb. Leiden: E.J. Brill.Google Scholar
Cited by

Cited by 1 other publications

Varga, Mónika
2020. Funkcionális variáció és átmenetiség a határozói igenevek köréből. Jelentés és Nyelvhasználat 7:1 ► pp. 75 ff. Crossref logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 28 january 2022. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.