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.

part I|39 pages

Background

chapter 2|7 pages

Problems of terminology

chapter 3|11 pages

Previous research

chapter 4|3 pages

Aim and scope of the study

chapter 5|2 pages

The corpus

part II|64 pages

The subject in free adjuncts and absolutes

chapter 6|48 pages

Control in free adjuncts

chapter 7|11 pages

The subject in absolutes

part III|100 pages

The interpretation of free adjuncts and absolutes

chapter 9|35 pages

General remarks

chapter 10|29 pages

Individual semantic relations

chapter 11|34 pages

Factors influencing the interpretation

part IV|14 pages

Implications for semantic and pragmatic theory