Adverbials: from predicative to discourse functions

Journal of Pragmatics, 1997

Cette étude examine les propriétés des adverbiaux de localisation du français à plusieurs niveaux. La structure syntaxique de ces éléments est décrite de même que les interactions complexes entre position dans la phrase et contribution sémantique. En se focalisant sur la position d'adjoint du syntagme verbal, on montre que le contenu sémantique des marqueurs considérés est mieux saisi par une approche 'relationnelle' que par une approche 'référentielle'. Une sémantique compositionnelle des adverbiaux en position de VP-adjoints est finalement proposée.

Universität Bern, 2018

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English Language & Linguistics, 1998

Note: the present version was put together in a different version of Word than the original document was written in, causing some disruption of page numbering and layoutand a mismatch with the Table of Contents. The bibliographic details of the published version are: Hasselgård, Hilde. 1996. Where and When: Positional and Functional Conventions for Sequences of Time and Space Adverbials in Present-Day English. Acta Humaniora (Doctoral thesis). Oslo: Scandinavian University Press.

Liking adverbials (LAs) play a very important role in discourse cohesion. This study examines the frequency and usage patterns of English LAs (110 in total) across five registers (Spoken English, Academic Writing, Fiction, News Writing, and Other writings) in the BNC. While the data analyses offer support for some previous research results, they also yield new findings regarding, among other things, variations in the adverbials' frequency distribution and usage patterns across the five registers. For example, while fiction's overall use of LAs is much lower than that of speaking and academic writing, its use of the sequential type of LAs is actually higher than the latter registers' . Also although news has the lowest overall LA frequency among the five registers, it boasts the highest use of LAs that express simultaneity (e.g. meanwhile). Besides discussing new findings, the paper also addresses their implications for language description, learning, and teaching.

Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society, 2008

Ph. Baldi & P. Cuzzolin (eds.), New Perspectives on Historical Latin Syntax, 4: Complex Sentences, Gramaticalization, Typology, Berlin, De Gruyter Mouton: 11-18., 2011

This overview concerns itself with the different semantic relations that can be introduced by Adverbial Subordinators (ASs) in the Latin language. The fact that the different adverbial clausal relations are dealt with in different chapters in this work makes it useful to offer a brief introduction that reports on some general issues which affect the entire topic area, both conceptually as well as organizationally.

Lingua, 1974

'ihe probiems of isoiating sentence adverbiais as a class are discussed. An attempt is then trade to subcaiegorise adverbials to take account of their trans.ormational relations and other sj ntactic characteristics. The intonation of English sentence adverbials is then considered with sibecid reference to sentence-initial position. It is found thiat there are correlations between i! tonation and syntactic class; and tnat other factors conditioning choice of intonation include: tI\e inherent semantics of the adverb; whether it modifies a sentence containing "new" or " :iven" information; and the attitude of the speaker. The interaction of these various factors is cl>nsidered in some detail. The findings are tested against informant reaction tests. Syntax We began this piece of work' by asking ourselves what factors cr,~tribute to the selection of the appropriate British English intonation for a given sentence adverbial. It soon became clear that, although other factors were involved, the question of which syntactic subclass the adverbial belonged to was a prime factor, and that it was necessary to examine the syntax of the adverbia sand thus also their semanticsin detail. Iln this first section we carry out this syntactic-semantic examination; in the second section we examine some aspects of the intonation of the adverbials in the light of our syntactic findings. By an ADVERBIAL we wish to denote any 'adjunct' or modifier uzd in a non-adjectival way. An adverbial may be a simple lexical item of the class ADVERB like perhaps or lzere; alternatively it may be of the structure ADJECTIVE (+-ly); or (PREPOSITION+) NOUN 1 We are indebted to D.A. Cruse for a number of valuable suggestions and comments. We are also grateful to our other department colleagues for their comments ai; willingness to act as informants. 2 D.J. AIlerton and A. Outtenden, English sentence a-'verbials PIIRASE; or PREPOSITION (+NOUN PHRASE) e.g. fast, Zoud(Zy), carefully; last night, (uuring) tnis qfternoon, in the evening, after (the meeting). We shall concentrate our attention on one word adverbs rather than adverbial phrases, i.e. on the first two types listed above. Our concern here is sentence adverbials, and wz must first isolate these as a class. Several tests have been proposed for a sentence adverbial. One is that sentence adverbials are adverbials formed from adjectives which can take an abstract subject nominal (Schreiber 1971) e.g., The idea was unforth late. This will obviously not cover adverbials which are not derived from adjectives (though a deep structure could of course be arrazged co that this were so in every case). Nor does it cover by arry means all classes of sentence adverb, e.g. the types exemplified by frankly, bri$!y, linguistically. More realistically, they may be defined according to criteria of transformation, co-occurrence, position and intonation (see A!!ertoni fort!!coming). It will prove most fruitful to take transformational potential as the most reliable guide both for identifying sentence as a class and for determining their subc!asses, and we develop this fully below. As regards co-occurrence, sentence adverbials are neutral, whereas manner and time adverbials for example have co-occurrence restrictions with the lexical verb and the auxiliary respectively. Four different positions within the sentence may be taken by most' sentence adverbs: initial; medial before the auxiliary; medial after the auxiliary but before the lexical verb; final position, e.g. Probably John was hurt. John probably was hu.rt. John was probably hurt. John was hurt, probably. The distinction between the two medial positions is of course neutralized if no auxiliary is present, e.g. John probably hurt himself. Many non-sentence adverbs, on the other hand, are restricted in their occurrence in these positions, e.g. degree adverbs like slightly may occur only before the lexical verb, or finally, cf.: * S!ightly John was hurt. * John slightly was hurt. John was slightly hurt. John was hurt slightly.

A question that is being asked with some frequency in recent years is: where does grammar come from? One proposed and widely accepted answer to this question takes as its founding assumption the nature of human cognitive make-up. There are language universals, it is said, that are best explained by common human ways of viewing and classifying the phenomenal world. This shared way of segmenting reality leads naturally to similarities in linguistic expression. Change in language is constrained along tracks determined by the genetically prescribed physiology of perception and categorization, and these constraints guarantee that languages will not depart from the universal mold. The mental, and therefore the universal, structures that underlie language are bounded not by the norms of usage but by intrinsic constraints on syntactic form. Therefore to understand the phenomenon of language we must examine what is possible rather than what is actual. Grammar is a matter of exploring the boundaries, of identifying the intrinsic structures of a language by pushing possible expressions up against the limits of the impossible. For example, from the fact that I can say "That is the castle that is haunted" but not "*That is the island that the castle that stands on is haunted" it is inferred that a conceptual line can be drawn between kinds of co-reference between main and subordinate clause items.

The aim of this paper is to offer a preliminary approach to apodotic uses of adverbs. This approach includes: an examination of the syntax and semantic of the complex sentences in which apodotic adverbs occur; an analysis of their role as markers of superordination; a revision of their classification as adjuncts, conjuncts or disjuncts; and a proposal about their position in the evolutionary path leading from adverbs to discourse markers. The theoretical frame of the analysis is a functional one.