ABSTRACT
Free adjuncts and absolutes typically function as adverbial clauses which are not overtly specified for any particular adverbial relation. The book is a non-formal, corpus based study of their current use in English. Its particular focus is on a comprehensive and in-depth analysis of their semantic indeterminacy and the syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic factors that help resolve it.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
part I|39 pages
Background
part II|64 pages
The subject in free adjuncts and absolutes
part III|100 pages
The interpretation of free adjuncts and absolutes
part IV|14 pages
Implications for semantic and pragmatic theory