Adverbial Adjuncts

The classification of adverbial sentence-elements has its own difficulties, because adverbials different in their syntactic content can be identical in terms of the formal syntactic bond.

By "syntactic content" we mean the content of the relationships between words in sentence-structure. These are:

a) process relationship, i. e. the relation between the process and the agent of the process;

b) object relationship — the relation between the object and the process or between two objects;

c) qualification relationship — the relation between the quality and the object or the process;

d) adverbial (or circumstantial) relationship.

Syntactic content is naturally understood as abstracted from the pertainance of words to the parts of speech and concrete lexical meaning.

In terms of syntactic content, adverbials may reasonably be subdivied into:

a) qualificative and b) circumstantial. The former are closely akin to adjectives.

Cf. An easy thing to do. He did it easily. A kind answer. He answered kindly.

Circumstantial adverbials are modifiers of place, purpose, time, concession, attending circumstances, etc.

This is not to say however that the above division covers all instances of the functional use of words in the position of adverbial adjuncts. Language is a system of interdependent units in which the value of each unit results only from the presence of the others. There are naturally borderline cases of dual or overlapping relationships. Prepositional phrases are often ambiguous. They are not indifferent to the concrete lexical meaning of words and their ability to combine with one other in certain patterns. Various important relations between types of such context-sensitive phrases can be adequately explained by transformational analysis.

Compare the following for illustration:

(a) She touched the animal with her careful hand (She touched the animal carefully).

(b) She touched the animal with her hand.

We cannot fail to see that object relations in (a) are somewhat weakened. The phrase is suggestive of adverbial meaning signalled by the adjective "careful", which cannot be said about the second example (b).

WORD-ORDER

The position of words and syntactic structures relative to one another is well known to be a most important part of English syntax. On this level of linguistic analysis distinction must naturally be made between two items: the order of words in phrase-structure and the order of words in sentence structure.

Due to the scarcity of morphological devices English has developed a tolerably fixed word-order which in most cases shows without fail what is the subject of the sentence.

But this is not to say that the grammatical rules of the normal word-order are strictly observed in absolutely all cases. The form of expression may depart from the common word-order for certain logical reasons

or under the stress of emotion, considerations of style, euphonic reasons, etc. The speaker or writer generally has some special emphasis to put on some part of the sentence (rhetorical order).

The following comparison will show the departure from the normal word-order in expressing subject-predicate relations (S→ P P→S);

(a) Came frightful days of snow and frost. (London) Cf. Frightful days of snow and frost came.

(b) Oh! very well. And suddenly she burst into tears of disappointment, shame and overstrain. Followed five minutes of acute misery. (Galsworthy)

Cf. Five minutes of acute misery followed. Further examples are:

(c) He remembered Irene saying to him once: "Never was any one born more loving and lovable than Jon". (Galsworthy)

(d) Then arrived in a group a number of Nicholases, always punctual — the fashion up Ladbroke Grove way; and close behind them Eustace and his men, gloomy and smelling rather of smoke. (Galsworthy)

Variations in word-order characterising a word or a phrase as to its thematic and rhematic quality have special communicative functions. Examine also the word-order arrangement in the following sentences with the front-position of objects and adverbial adjuncts:

On the hearth stood an enormous bowl, with bottles beside it, glinting in the firelight. (Ch. Snow)

...At last I turned away. On the pavement, walking towards me, was Sheila. (Ch. Snow)

Thus, dreadfully, was revealed to him the lack of imagination in the human being. (Galsworthy)

Sometimes emphatic front-position of sentence-element is found without inversion of subject and predicate. This is the case, for instance, with objects referring to what immediately precedes in the context.

To the little I told him, he was formally sympathetic; but in his heart he thought it all inexplicable and somewhat effeminate. (Ch. Snow)

, Of these she read to little Jon, till he was allowed to read to himself; whereupon she whisked back to London and left them with him in a heap. (Galsworthy)

To her new fangled dress, frilly about the hips and tight below the knees, June took a sudden liking — a charming colour, flax-blue. (Galsworthy)

Her heart he only knew the value of when she said softly: ^uGo on out, and don't ever come in here again." (Sillitoe)

With regard to the relative positions of subject and verbal predicate there are three possibilities which may be denoted respectively:

(a) the "normal" order S→ P;

(b) the "inverted" order P → S;

(c) the inverted order with P split up into two parts and S coming between them.

It is interesting to observe that in sentences of the third type (c) the subject often has a lengthy attribute attached to it, which adds to its rhematic quality and semantic prevalence in the whole statement.