Free Adjuncts and Absolutes in English: Problems of Control and Interpretation

by Kortmann,Bernd

• ISBN13: 9780415063913
• ISBN10: 0415063914
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1991-12-06
• Publisher: Routledge

Summary

Free Adjuncts and Absolutes in Englishpresents a corpus-based syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic analysis of free adjuncts and absolutes in present-day English. The major function of these constructions is to serve as adverbial clauses, most frequently without any overt specification of which semantic relation they express in a given complex sentence. The central problems of the use and interpretation of both free adjuncts and absolutes is the main focus of the book. These include the range and nature of their semantic indeterminacy, the factors that help resolve it, and, for free adjuncts, the identification of their underlying subject. As many of the basic issues addressed in the book are not confined to English, its findings and hypotheses should also attract the attention of linguists interested in these relevant constructions in other languages.Free Adjuncts and Absolutes in Englishmakes important and challenging claims with regard to thesyntactic, semantic, and pragmatic phenomena that may influence the interpretation of these constructions, and, with respect to the way diverse interpretive behavior of free adjunct and absolutes is predictable, from higher functional and pragmatic principles. The conclusions found in this volume will be of great benefit to scholars working in the fields of syntax, semantics, pragmatics, and cognitive and text linguistics.

Table of Contents

List of figures and tables	x
Acknowledgements	xi
Note on texts	xiii
Part I Background	1	(40)
The structural diversity of free adjuncts and absolutes	5	(12)
Free adjuncts	6	(4)
Absolutes	10	(3)
Related but different constructions	13	(4)
Problems of terminology	17	(7)
Previous research	24	(11)
Traditional grammar	24	(2)
The semantic variability of free adjuncts and absolutes	26	(9)
Weak versus strong adjuncts/absolutes (I): matrix clauses with binary operators	27	(3)
Weak versus strong adjuncts/absolutes (II): individual-level and stage-level predicates	30	(2)
Inferences and their impact on logical role	32	(3)
Aim and scope of the study	35	(3)
The corpus	38	(3)
Part II The subject in free adjuncts and absolutes	41	(64)
Control in free adjuncts	43	(48)
Degrees of unrelatedness and acceptability	43	(4)
Relevant factors in a theory of control	47	(29)
Preclusion of SM-control (group 1)	49	(4)
Preclusion of SM-control (group 2)	53	(11)
The controller and its properties	64	(12)
Alternative theories of control	76	(15)
Functional control	77	(3)
Pragmatics-conditioned control	80	(3)
Embedded infinitives	83	(8)
The subject in absolutes	91	(11)
No coreference	92	(1)
Constituent coreference	93	(2)
Part-whole coreference	95	(4)
Full coreference	99	(3)
The nature of the subject in a definition of free adjuncts and absolutes	102	(3)
Part III The interpretation of free adjuncts and absolutes	105	(100)
General remarks	107	(35)
Semantic representations	107	(7)
Recovery of deleted conjunctions	108	(4)
Autonomous constructions without a basic meaning	112	(2)
Constraints on the semantic indeterminacy	114	(28)
Limited search domains	115	(3)
Different degrees of informativeness in semantic relations	118	(14)
Distribution of semantic relations	132	(10)
Individual semantic relations	142	(29)
Anteriority and posteriority	142	(15)
Anteriority	143	(8)
Posteriority	151	(3)
The temporal semantics and pragmatics of present-participial free adjuncts	154	(3)
Conditionality	157	(3)
Concessivity	160	(4)
Instrumentality, manner, and exemplification/specification	164	(4)
Accompanying circumstance	168	(3)
Factors influencing the interpretation	171	(34)
Negation	173	(17)
The interpretation of negated free adjuncts	174	(6)
`Without + V-ing'-constructions	180	(2)
A comparison with negated free adjuncts	182	(8)
Idiomatization	190	(4)
Augmentation	194	(11)
The augmentation of free adjuncts	195	(4)
The augmentation of absolutes	199	(6)
Part IV Implications for semantic and pragmatic theory	205	(14)
Free adjuncts and absolutes as instances of minimization in language	207	(8)
Free adjuncts and absolutes and the semantics-pragmatics distinction	215	(4)
Notes	219	(17)
References	236	(8)
Index	244