Adverbials

Chapter 11 Longman Student Grammar of Spoken

and Written EnglishBiber; Conrad; Leech (2009, p. 353-396)

Introduction• Adverbials are clause elements that serve three major functions.

– They tell the circumstances relating to the clause, such as when or where an activity took place (circumstance adverbials). She grinned widely.

– They express a speaker’s feelings, evaluation, or comments on what the clause is about (stance adverbials). In all honesty, $300 million...

– They link the clause (or some part of it) to another clause (linking adverbials). In summary, the apartments are of high standard.

• WIDELY VARYING TYPES OF LAND ARE CULTIVATED. (widely – part of the phrase)

• The most notable point of adverbials is how varied they are.– They serve a variety of functions.– They have many semantic roles. concession, reason, location, time, attitude...

– They have a wide range of syntactic forms.– They occur in various positions in clauses.– Multiple adverbials can occur in a clause.– Most adverbials are optional.

Overview of adverbials• There are three classes of adverbials: circumstance, stance, and

linking.– Circumstance adverbials are by far the most common class.

• Adverbials can take many forms: adverbs and adverb phrases, nouns and noun phrases, prepositional phrases, and finite and non-finite clauses.– Prepositional phrases are the most common form overall.

• Adverbials can occur in three major positions in clauses: initial, final and medial.– Medial position has several variants.– In conversation and fictional dialog, some adverbials are connected with

another speaker’s main clause.

• The function of adverbials in their clauses sometimes varies, depending on the scope of circumstance and stance adverbials, or the amount of text connected by linking adverbials.

Circumstance adverbials• There are seven major semantic categories of circumstance

adverbials: place, time, process, contingency, degree, addition/restriction, and recipient.– Place, time, and process (especially manner) adverbials are most

common overall.– Three circumstance adverbials are extremely common in conversation

and have important functions in spoken discourse: just, then, and there.

• Circumstance adverbials can appear in initial, medial, and final position.– Final position is the most common position for circumstance adverbials

in general.– Initial position is commonly used to maintain given/new information

structure or when the adverbial has scope over a series of clauses.– Medial position is common for addition/restriction and degree adverbs

that have limited scope, and for short adverbials of time.

Circumstance adverbials that are clauses• Clausal circumstance adverbials have some special types of meaning

in addition to the meanings of non-clausal circumstance adverbials.– For example: Conditional clauses can express open, hypothetical (unreal), and

rhetorical conditions.– Additional semantic categories are preference, proportion, and supplement.

• Finite clauses are much more common than non-finite clauses.– They also have a number of advantages over non-finite clauses, such as a wider

range of meanings and an explicitly stated subject.

• Final position is the most common position for both finite and non-finite clauses.

• Initial position often serves special functions: especially signaling cohesion or information flow, and framing subsequent discourse.

• Subordinators begin the great majority of finite clauses but are rare with non-finite clauses.

Stance adverbials• There are three major types of stance (overtly mark a speaker/writer’s attitude

to a clause about its content) adverbials: epistemic, attitude, and style.• Epistemic stance adverbials convey meanings such as

doubt/certainty, actuality/reality, and imprecision.• Some stance adverbials overlap in their functions with circumstance

adverbials, linking adverbials, and discourse markers.• The highest frequency of stance adverbials overall is in conversation.• Single adverbs are the most common form of stance adverbial.• All of the most common stance adverbials are epistemic.• Medial position is the most common position for stance adverbials.• Stance adverbials have important interactional functions in

conversation.

Epistemic adj (Philosophy) of or relating to knowledge or epistemology

Linking adverbials• There are six major semantic categories of linking adverbials:

enumeration/addition, summation, apposition, result/inference, contrast/concession, and transition.

• The greatest use and greatest diversity of linking adverbials are found in academic prose.– Conversation has the second highest frequency of linking adverbials, due

mostly to a few very common items, like so.– Cohesion in news and fiction depends less on explicit linking adverbials and

more on chronological order or implicit connections.

• Four linking adverbials are extremely common in conversation: so, then, though, anyway. They are important in the unfolding of conversational discourse.

• Initial position is the typical position for linking adverbials generally.– Three of the common linking adverbials in conversation tend to appear in

final position: then, anyway, though.