Research questions revisited

The present study set out to explore the following aspects of adjunct adverbials: (i) syntactic and semantic categories; (ii) the frequency of such adverbials and their subcategories; (iii) the placement of such adverbials; and (iv) discourse functions of such adverbials.

The first part involved a discussion of the classification of adverbials, and of the adjunct category in particular. Previous studies, including reference grammars, differ greatly in their classification schemes. Thus it was necessary to establish a framework for the classification of adjuncts before embarking on the analysis proper. A relatively wide definition of ‘adjunct’ was retained, much like the category of ‘circumstance adjuncts’ in Biber et al. (1999: 776).

Main findings of the preceding chapters

Semantic types (frequency and semantic complexity)

The subdivision of the adjunct category was outlined in section 2.4. The main types are space, time, manner, contingency, respect, degree, participant, comparison, situation, focus and viewpoint. These differ greatly in frequency, as shown in figure 13.1 (see also figure 2.1): time and space adjuncts alone account for 68% of all the adjuncts. Another 22% are taken up by manner and contingency adjuncts, 4% by participant adjuncts, 2% by respect, and the remaining 4% are shared by degree, comparison, situation, focus and viewpoint adjuncts.

The different types of adjunct are to some extent associated with different types of actions and situations. This can be shown by correlating adjunct types with process types, as in figure 13.2.