Adverbials Introduction Of all the grammatical structures in English, adverbials, including single-word adverbs (carefully, often), phrases (before lunch, at last), and clauses (when she had finished, if we still have time) stand out as the most diverse in their forms and syntactic positions. In introducing adverbial characteristics, Quirk, Greenbaum, Leech, and Svartvik (1985) call them “the most nebulous and puzzling of the word classes,” adding that “it is tempting to say simply that the adverb is an item that does not fit the definitions for other word classes” (p. 438). Similarly, Hasselgard (2010) has remarked that adverbials may be considered “a rag-bag category in the linguistic system” (p. 3). We might choose a different metaphor to characterize the many useful roles that adverbials play in expressing meanings; however, it does seem to be the case that when a word, phrase, or clause doesn’t clearly fit into some other category, we often opt for that “collection of items” known as adverbials. The frequency and diversity of adverbials can be seen in the following text examples of spoken and written English from the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA). The adverbials are underlined; adverbials inside larger adverbial structures are indicated in brackets. When we woke up [the next morning], after we had gone [through the wind and the rain and the waiting room], the windows blew in and they had kept the baby safe in the middle of the hospital . . . (CBS The Early Show, August 28, 2010) Previously unearthed fo: indicate that modern humans moved from Afri the Middle East approximately 100,000 years ago but, either because they died out or returned [to Africa], gave way to Neanderthals by 70,000 years ago. (Science News, February 26, 2011, p. 5) One of the largest categories of English adverbials, and most frequently used across all registers, are adverbials used to provide information about events and actions, including direction, position, manner, time, frequency, purpose, reason, among others (see Chapter 6). ‘Most of the adverbials in the examples above fall into this category. They correspond to the traditional definitions of adverbs, often explained as answering questions such as Were, When, How, and Why. This large group of adverbials has traditionally been termed adjunct adverbials (Quirk et al., 1985). However, other classifying terms reflect their functions: Biber, Johansson, Leech, Conrad, and Finegan (1999) call them circumstance adverbials (p. 763); similarly, Halliday and Matthiessen (2014) term them circumstantial adverbials (p. 123). Since 509510 much current corpus-based research on adverbials refers to Biber et. al. categories in the Longman Grammar of Spoken and Written English, we will use the term circumstance adverbials in this chapter. Because there are so many types of circumstance adverbials, it should not come as a surprise that they have been subclassified in English grammars in different ways; the varying terminology and labels can be confusing for teachers and students alike. As Hasselgard (2010) has stated, “A striking feature of adverbials is that there are hardly any two grammars that use the same classification scheme and/or terminology” (p. 21). For example, she notes that Quirk et al. (1985) classify some adverbials that express temporal relationships, such as frequency adverbs seldom and never, in a separate category called subjuncts, whereas Biber et al. (1999) include them with circumstance time adverbials. For teaching purposes, you will most likely choose only a subset of circumstance adverbials and their subcategories (e.g., direction and position as subcategories of place). We have done much the same thing in this chapter, selecting those categories that are the most frequent and, we think, most useful. Aside from circumstance adverbials, the other major category of adverbials we will be looking at in this chapter is one which deals with the attitudes of speakers and writers toward their content. These have commonly been referred to as stance adverbials. Here are some spoken and written examples (some from COCA) with the stance adverbials underlined: No doubt we could have done better with more time. Neighboring villages had evidently joined the fight; there were 200 people in the makeshift camp now. (Mother Jones, March/April 2010, p.36) Another storm this week in the Northeast and folks are already starting to dig out... Unfortunately, there is another system on the way in the Great Lakes. (CBS, The Early Show, January 27,2011) | mean, | read the blogs, and it gets kind of depressing, frankly, to read those blogs. (This Week, 2011 [110123]) Technically speaking, he didn’t forget. He just didn’t think it relevant. (Analog Science, Fiction and Fact, September 2010) As these examples show, stance adverbials have to do with expressing degrees of probability (0 doubt, evidently), evaluations (unfortunately), and the manner in which messages are conveyed (frankly, technically speaking). Like the circumstance adverbials, stance adverbials have been subelassified in many ways. In this chapter, we will present classifications that seem most useful for teaching purposes. In addition to circumstance and stance adverbials, a third category of adverbials are words and phrases used to create logical connections such as contrast, addition, reason/result and concession between sentences and larger parts of discourse, e.g., however; in addition, as a result, and nevertheless. We will treatithese adverbials as a subcategory of “logical connectors,” which is the focus’of Chapter 26. As you might expect, sinc®-adverbials are so frequent in English and express many common meanings, such as time and place, they are introduced and practiced at every level of ESL/EFL instruction. Even at beginning levels, students study not only single word adverbs and adverb phrases, but also adverbial prepositional phrases and clauses. For example, consider the adverbials in the sentences that follow, which are used to express time: The Grammar BookIll call you tomorrow. Jusually get up before 8 A.M. After | eat breakfast, I check my e-mi Ihave been learning English for two months. Because of the great variety in the forms, meanings, and uses of adverbials, they pose diverse learning challenges for ESL/EFL students. Here, we list some of the challenges along with examples of learner productions related to each. Adverbial Feature Example of Learner Productions Placement of adverbials in relation to | *Judy washes often her car. other sentence constituents “We are going probably to Hawaii for our spring break. ‘Ordering of adverbials in sequences | *He very carefully usually listens to the directions for assignments. Word forms of single-word adverbs ‘+My father works very hardly; he has two jobs. *Emmy Lou Harris sings beautiful. ‘Structures of prepositional phrases (in| *In spite of | don't like sushi, | tried some at my contrast to adverb clauses) friend's house. Using stance adverbials appropriately | Teacher: Raul, how about you? Do you like sushi? in speech and,writing Raul: 20f course | do. (While this is correct in form, it could be a pragmatic error; ie., an error of appropriateness in use. We have already discussed adverbials briefly in Chapter 2 (grammatical terminology), and Chapter 6 (phrase structure rules), and again in Chapter 21 (prepositions). In this chapter, we provide an overview of adverbials in terms of their major phrasal and clausal types, including participles functioning as adverbials, complementing the section in Chapter 20 (adjectives) that examined participles functioning as adjectivals. We also examine what types of adverbials occur in sentence-final and in sentence-initial position, and we give special attention to preverbal adverbs of frequency! (e.g., sometimes, often, never) since they occur primarily—though not exclusively—before main verbs in sentence medial position. As mentioned previously, this chapter is a general overview. Other specific topics involving adverbials are covered in later chapters: Logical connectors are focused on in Chapter 26 and adverbial conditional clauses in Chapter 27. Relative adverbials are discussed in Chapter 29, and adverbials of degree are treated in Chapters 34 and 35. We begin this chapter with a review and expansion of the rules stated in Chapter 6 for sentence-final adverbials; then we treat sentence-initial adverbials before considering some issues of form and use that pertain to both sentence-final and sentence-initial adverbials. Our discussion of adverb clauses in conversation and writing considers differences in uses across registers, including adverb clauses in conversation that stand alone, apart from independent clauses. We then turn to participles functioning as adverbials, before finally treating preverbal adverbs of frequency. Chapter 25: Adverbials 511512 Sentence-Final Adverbials: Forms, Meanings, and Uses According to Biber et al. (1999), sentence-final adverbials are by far the most frequent type of adverbials in English across all registers and text types (p. 765). Hasselgard’s (2010) analysis of circumstance adverbials in a 60,000-word corpus supports this claim. Her investigation of spoken and written texts from the British sub-corpus of the International Corpus of English (ICE-GB) revealed that 77 percent of the adverbials occurred in sentence-final position. In our discussion to come, we will look further into the frequencies of the various forms and meaning subcategories of sentence-final adverbials. As you will see, sentence-final adverbials can be characterized not only by their forms, but also by their typical meanings and the particular roles that they play in spoken and written discourse. As shown in our phrase structure rules in Chapter 6, sentence-final adverbials occur in the form of adverb clauses, adverb phrases, or prepositional phrases: PRED — AUX VP (ADVL") AdvCl ADVL -| AdvP | PrepP ‘Adverb clause: Mary danced while John played the piano. Adverb phrase: Mary danced very gracefully. Prepositional phrase: Mary danced in the living room. Here is an example tree diagram of a sentence with two final adverbials Jason ate dinner at four o'clock because he was hungry. PRED ~ four o'clock NP AUX VP aN oo Poa RP he past be hungry MEANING OF SENTENCE-FINAL ADVERBIALS Some of the most common meanings of adverbials in all registers are presented in the following table. As this table shows, not every form combines with every subtype of adverbial The Grammar BookFORM AND MEANING OF SENTENCE-FINAL ADVERBIALS Form of Sentence-Final Adverbials ‘Meaning of ‘Adverb Clause Adverb Phrase Preposit Adverbial Place Direction _ (far) north tothe store o’there Position where the road ends (quite) locally | ‘inthe middle here Distance as far as we could see (very) far for along way @ several miles Time afterhesawthereport | (fairly) recently | at sixo‘clock @next week Duration aslongasyouareable | (quite) briefly | for twomonths Frequency as often as ican’ {almost) always | @ every Monday Temporal aftertheysawthe report | (much) later after the storm relationship _|_while we were sleeping Manner just asido (very) quickly with care as though it didn’t matter like a hawk Instrument _ _ with a hammer Reason/Cause because weweretired | _ because of the since it was important weather* due to the accident of a broken heart Purpose inordertofinish the job | _ for the glory to explain what happened Concession though he disagreed despite her fears although it was early in spite of our doubts ‘Addition _ too in addition to his salary aswell Extent/Degree completely by about twice the somewhat normal rate A study focused only on sentence-final adverbials was done by Miller (1991). His analysis of almost 3,000 clause-final adverbials in a 50,000-word corpus (roughly half speech and half writing) revealed that approximately 5 percent of the adverbials were prepositional phrases. ‘These findings indicate that prepositional phrases are an important adverbial structure for grammar focus in ESL/E 'L classrooms. Chapter 25: Adverbials 513514 USE OF SENTENCE-FINAL ADVERBIALS Although circumstance adverbials can also occur in sentence-initial and sentence-medial positions, in their sentence-final roles, they tend to be related more closely to the verb phrases that they modify. And in some cases, they are required to complete the meaning of verb phrases, as in the following sentences: ‘She put her coat on the chair. ‘The ladder lay on the ground. Aswe pointed out in Chapter 6, when more than one sentence-final adverbial is used to describe an event, there are patterns that tend to be followed. The next table summarizes these patterns. ORDER PATTERNS OF SENTENCE-FINAL ADVERBIALS Order Patterns Examples Direction before position Last saw Phil walking down the street in Atlanta. Manner before time orfrequency __| Ms. Lee worked very quickly yesterday. Direction or position before time | Tourists travel to the Caribbean every December. or frequency Reason or purpose follow other Kuniko studies hard to get good grades. adverbials avers “This information allows us to propose the following rule of thumb regarding the unmarked ordering of sentence-final adverbials: direction + position <——} manner + time <——> frequency + purpose + reason “These sequencing patterns were explored in the previously mentioned study by Miller (1991). His analysis strongly confirmed the patterns shown in the table above, with the following findings: * Direction comes before position (92 percent) * Manner comes before time or frequency (75 percent) * Direction or position come before time or frequency (80 percent) + Reason or purpose come after other adverbials (75 percent) “The motivations for some of these preferred patterns stem from the verbs they modify. For example, direction and position adverbials typically occur before time adverbials because they are more closely related to the verbs as in this example: I will drive to the airport tomorrow. Note that tomorrow could be repositioned quite far from the verb; e.g., Tomorrow, all the members of any family will drive to the airport. ewould sound odd to move to the airport away from the verb To the airport all themembers of my family will drive tomorrow. When speakers or writers do not follow these preferred orderings,their motivation may relate to the principle of end-focus, which we saw operating in sentences with indirect objects and separable phrasal verbs. This information structure principle, holds that it is rare for the first of two items in a sequence to be longer than the second one (Biber et al., 1999, p. 813). Miller's (1991) study found that the principle of shorter constitiients preceding longer ones also applied to the sequencing of adverbial strings that included adverb phrases and adverb clauses; adverb phrases tended to occur first in a string (61 percent of the time) and adverb clauses tended to occur last (78 percent of the time) as in this example, which also has a single manner adverb (comfortably) ‘The Grammar Bookas the first modifier. Here we see that contrary to the preferred pattern, a time clause follows a purpose clause, presumably due to the length of the former: Manner adverb Position prepositional phrase Mary Morris is resting comfortably at her Buttonwillow home Purpose clause Time clause to finish her recuperation after her doctors released her this morning. How often do strings of sentence-final adverbials occur in spoken and written English? ‘Miller's (1991) analysis revealed that strings with more than three sentence-final adverbs— while possible—were extremely rare. In fact, in his data, only 27 percent of sentence-final adverbials occurred with another adverbial, and of those, the majority occurred with only one other (e.g., They raced up the slope to the steppes. Only 4 percent were found in strings of three final adverbials (¢.g., They raced up the slope to the steppes beyond.) As you might expect, Miller found that multiple adverbials tended to be more frequent in writing than in speech. A final observation regarding sentence-final adverbials concerns their scope; thatis, the extent to which they modify other parts of a sentence. In general, adverbials used in sentence- final positions are more limited in scope than the adverbials that occur in other positions. For example, compare the scope of two sentence-final circumstance adverbials with the scope of the adverbials in other positions: Sentence-final adverbials: ‘The taxi driver helped us put our luggage in the trunk, Fil call you Monday morning. Sentence-initial and sentence-medial adverbials: Certainly, after we finish this project, we will deserve a vacat She is evidently not planning to join us for dinner. As these examples show, the different sentence positions tend to be occupied by different meaning categories. The sentence-final adverbials above express place and time, whereas the sentence-initial and sentence-medial adverbials express meanings related to speaker stance. ‘As we will discuss in the next section, not all sentence-initial and sentence-medial adverbials modify an entire clause or sentence. However, many of them, unlike the sentence- final adverbials, do. Form, Meaning, and Use of Sentence-Initial Adverbials FORM OF SENTENCE-INITIAL ADVERBIALS Like sentence-final adverbials, sentence-initial adverbials can be adverb phrases (which includes single words), prepositional phrases, or adverb clauses: ‘Adverb phrase: Fortunately, Helen won the election. Prepositional phrase: With our help, Helen won the election. Adverb clause: After we held a recount, Helen won the election. In order to account structurally for the possibility of having one or more adverbials in initial position, we allow the sentence modifier (sm) to include sentential adverbials as one of many possibilities (ie., along with not, Q, etc.). As Quirk et al. (1985) point out, initial adverbials “are Chapter 25: Adverbials 515516 syntactically more detached and in some respects ‘superordinate’ in that they have a scope that extends over the sentence as a whole” (p. 613). We have encountered such sentences in Chapter 6. Here is another example tree diagram for a sentence with this type of adverbial: Fortunately, Helen won the election. * 3 ADVL ai PRED | Adve NP AUX vw | bool OAS ADV N oT V¥ NP | boot AN fortunately Helen past. win det N | the election We could change the sentence modifier so that instead of being a single adverb phrase like “fortunately,” it is a prepositional phrase (c.g., ofcourse, with our help) or an adverb clause (e.g:, awben we all voted; after we held a recount). With the exception of fortunately and of course, the other sentence-initial adverbials do not express speaker stance and attitude.’ However, like the single- word adverbs, their scope also includes the entire following sentence. We say more about the use of sentence-initial adverbials in a later section, MEANING OF SENTENCE-INITIAL ADVERBIALS As the phrasal and clausal examples given here illustrate, circumstance adverbials can occur in initial as well as final positions, especially adverb clauses (e.g., after we held a recount). In this position, such clauses have different uses than sentence-final clauses do. Some of these differences will be discussed later in our section devoted to adverb clauses. As for other circumstance adverbials, we have already noted that the great majority of them occur in final position. Only time adverbials occur sentence-initially with any frequency: approximately 20 percent across spoken and written registers (Biber et al., 1999, p. 802). In an interesting corpus study, Diessel (2008) shows that although temporal clauses generally follow main clauses as do other adverb clauses, there is a correlation between clause order and iconicity. What this means is that temporal clauses denoting prior events precede the main clause more often than temporal clauses that denote events that occur after or simultaneous to the one expressed in the main clause. Diessel attributes this finding to the fact that the iconic sequence makes complex sentences easier to process. Other than circumstance adverb clauses (and logical connectors, the topic of the next chapter), sentence-initial adverbials are typically those related to speaker attitude or stance, the second semantic category we introduced at the beginning of this chapter. Like circumstance adverbials, stance adverbials havé been subclassified in different ways, as being “epistemic” (Lyons, 1979), “evaluative” (Ernst, 1984), “evidential” (Chafe & Nichols, 1986; Palmer, 1988), “factive” (Koktova, 1986a; 1986b), and “attitudinal” (Greenbaum, 1969). Wefind ituseful to refer to the four functional categories given by Halliday and Matthiessen (2014) for sentence-initial adverbials, all of which refer to a different facet of speaker attitude: ‘The Grammar BookProbability: maybe, perhaps, certainly, surely Usuality: usually, generally, typically, occasionally Presumption: of course, obviously, clearly, evidently Desirability: (un)fortunately, luckily, hopefully, regrettably The most comprehensive data-based study of sentence-initial adverbials was done by Lee (1991). In her analysis of 736 sentence-initial adverbials in a 675,000-word corpus, she found the following distribution (Lee, 1991, p. 29): probability 280/736 | 38percent | (eg, (unfortunately) usuality 200/736 | 27percent | (eg, sometimes, often) presumption | 199/736 | 27 percent | (e.g. ofcourse, obviously) desirability 57/736 8percent_| (e.g, maybe, perhaps) If we consider the kinds of meanings expressed in the four categories, it is not surprising that the first three categories are well represented in Lee’s corpus, while the fourth was not particularly frequent. The first three categories contain adverbials such as maybe, sometimes, and of course, which are very common in speech and writing. We might expect attitude markers such as (un)fortunately to be much less frequent, especially in speech. Maybe versus Perhaps. Lee’s (1991) findings about the highly frequent sentence-initial adverbials maybe and perbaps parallel the findings of Biber et al. (1999) across all sentence positions. Lee found that maybe occurred twice as often in speech as in writing, while perhaps had the reverse pattern. Similarly, in Biber et als conversational corpus, maybe was much more common (500 occurrences per million words) across all sentence positions than perhaps (200 per million words). An interesting difference identified in Biber et al. conversational corpus of American and British English is that maybe is much more common in American English (800 occurrences per million words versus only 200 per million in British English). Obviously versus Clearly. A number of studies have looked at the contrasts between adverbials that have similar meanings. Simon-Vandenbergen and Aijmer (2007) summarize several studies that have distinguished uses of these adverbials. They note that while in the system of Halliday and Matthiessen (2014), surely is listed with of course, obviously, and clearly, indicating “obviousness,” a study by Downing (2001) showed that surely signals not only certainty but also surprise. Downing also found, comparing usage in speech acts such as questioning or seeking agreement, that the functions of surely varied depending on the speech act and, in some cases, was even challenging or confrontational. Certainly versus Obviously. Another study by Barbaresi (1987) found that certainly and obviously were used differently in one genre of academic writing. In Barbaresi’ data of 60 scientific articles in economics, certainly was used epistemically (that is, to convey the degree of certainty a writer had about information)’, whereas obviously served as a rhetorical strategy device to express something that the writer assumed could be easily perceived by someone; in other words, the writer feels that readers can easily infer the truth of the information. Certainly versus Definitely. Simon-Vandenbergen (2008) found that in the BNC certainly was used more often in formal and public speech and writing whereas definitely occurs more frequently in informal and private dialogue. She also reported that certainly typically is used in contrasts, while definitely generally signals emphasis. In addition, the two prefer different modifiers: almost certainly but most definitely. Chapter 25: Adverbials 517518 Of Course versus Obviously. Simon-Vandenbergen and Aijmer (2007) add that obviously is often less authoritative than of course and primarily expresses the meaning “as evidence shows” rather than “as we all know” (p. 312). They suggest that of course expresses more authority, emphasizing the speaker's belief that the hearer should know the information. In their data from the ICE-GB corpus, they found a striking difference between the frequencies of obviously and of course in broadcast discussions compared to casual conversations. While obciously and of course occurred with about the same frequency in conversation (482 versus 422 per million, respectively), in the broadcast discussion data, there were only 25 occurrences of obviously per 1 million words, compared to 975 occurrences of of course. Focusing on differences between speech and writing in the use of of course, Simon- Vandenbergen (1992) found distinct usage differences between two genres—casual conversation and political interviews. Whereas of course was used in conversation to express solidarity and politeness, its use in political speech involved primarily expressions of power and authority Sometimes. A stance adverbial may differ in use not only across registers or genres, but also depending on its role in the development of a text, either spoken or written. Lee (1991) found that the discourse functions of sometimes varied depending on where it occurred sentence- initially in a paragraph or episode. She summarized her finding as follows: When it was used paragraph- or episode-initially (22/77 occurrences), sometimes functions to present the topic and create a transition with what preceded it: Sometimes the truth itself is better than fiction. An almost illiterate man served three years in jail for a warehouse robbery he insisted he didn’t commit. His defense was that he was a mile away in a shopping plaza, but he had no witnesses. (Lee, 1991, p. 58) In paragraph- or episode-medial positions (42/77 occurrences), sometimes elaborates upon or restates the preceding argument: Well, there are some aspects that overlap. Sometimes, say, for instance, the matter of point of view will come up in a poem. .... It’s crucial in fiction, and it’s not somet! you thinka lot about in poetry. ... (Lee, 1991, p.60) As a paragraph- or episode-final marker (13/77 tokens), sometimes is used to sum up the preceding arguments, to show the result of a process or some change, or to offer a final alternative, as in the last sentence of the following speaker turn: “it used to be/’ said my friend, Beth, grieving the death of her middle son, “that whenever I'd catch myself in repose, I'd be aware that | wasn’t happy. ... Somewhere along the way, there has been a change. I'm no longer feeling that ever-present sorrow. | feel comfortable again in moments of repose. Sometimes | feel very happy.” (Lee, 1991, pp. 60-61) Fortunately versus Unfortunately. Students can also benefit from developing awareness of other structures that co-occur with stance adverbials, structures that help to reveal discourse functions of these adverbials. For efample, Lee (1991) looked at the different uses of the stance pair fortunately and unfortunately in writing. She found that unfortunately (which was used twice as frequently as fortunately), tends to co-occur with other grammatical and lexical items expressing a negative or problematic situation: [in a review of P. Skira's Still Life: A History] [The genre of still life] has suffered from relative scholarly neglect in spite of the almost hypnotic appeal exerted by many of the images ... produced by... our Greatest artists... Unfortunately, this volume fails to fill the void. It does not supersede ‘The Grammar BookCharles Sterling's “Sti (1959), which, regrettably, was reprinted in 1981 with only black-and-white illustrations, (Lee, 1991, p. 83) In contrast to the use of unfortunately to foreground problems, fortunately follows the statement ofa problem, indicating the speaker’s conviction that the reality ofa situation is more positive than prior information might lead one to exp (from a review of a restaurant] ‘The Cactus Café is the front end of a comedy nightclub, The New Improvisation, in Santa Monica. But these ungainly air ducts hanging down from the ceiling aren't funny Fortunately, though, the Cactus Café is a pretty comfortable room, with its surprisingly high ceiling and mirrors. It’s a pleasant place to sit and eat ... (Lee, 1991, p.87) “These kinds of generalizations about stance markers can be especially useful in helping students in their reading of difficult texts to predict more quickly how two sections joined by these stance markers are related to each other. ‘All of these studies we have discussed indicate that while groups of stance adverbials with similar meanings sometimes have similar uses, in many contexts, they are used for different purposes, reflecting to varying degrees speaker authority and speaker assumptions of what the hearer should know. And the same stance adverbial often has different functions in different genres or even in different parts of a text's development. Thus, in teaching students about stance adverbials, especially at more advanced levels, it is important to help them become aware of usage differences across registers and genres. Other adverbials that are very common in initial position are actuality markers (e.g., really, actually) (see Liu and Espino, 2012), conversational imprecision markers (e.g., kind of, sort of like), and style adverbials (e.g., honestly, confidentially) (Biber et al. 1999). USE OF SENTENCE-INITIAL ADVERBIALS ‘There tend to be two primary motivations for placing circumstance adverbials in sentence-initial position. One is to place special focus or emphasis on this information (examples from COCA): During the last quarter mile, | felt like | was going to collapse. (Backpacker, August 2010) The discourse functions of focus and emphasis for adverbials and other structures will be discussed in detail in Chapter 30. A second discourse motivation for sentence-initial circumstance adverbials is to create a link to preceding text, as in this example, which follows a description of a woman getting assessed for a physical ailment. In the previous month, her bizarre constellation of symptoms, the most prominent of which was shortness of breath, had grown much worse ... (Health, 2011 [110329]) Sentence-initial adverb clauses play an important role in creating cohesive connections in written discourse; their use for this purpose will be discussed further in the next section. With Respect To/As For. One category of circumstance adverbial not discussed earlier is that which is used to define or limit the scope of a topic to be discussed. Unlike other circumstance adverbials, adverbials in this category occur sentence initially; it includes phrases such as with respect to and as for. Termed adverbials of respect by Biber et al. (1999), these adverbials are especially common in written registers and formal speech. Biber et al. comment that these adverbials have functions similar to both logical connectors (e.g., however, therefore) and stance adverbials (c.g, certainly, fortunately). Like logical connectors, they can introduce a new topic connected to a previous one. And like stance adverbials, they can express the speaker's perspective on the truth of what follows, though not as strongly as the stance adverbials do (p. 805). The Chapter 25: Adverbials 519520 following examples from COCA illustrate the functions of linking to previous topics in defining a new topic: ++ stress response that interrupts the body's ability to fight cancer cell development might be at work. With respect to heart disease, a more complex set of potential pathways... has been proposed. (American Journal of Public Health, January 2011) The extra-wide (toothbrush) head contains 65% more bristle tufts than standard models . .. and, in a world that apparently has gone eco-wild, they are a favorite among the greenies since they last up to three times longer than normal brands. As for the cases, they are designed without drain holes. (USA Today, March, 2011) Stance Marker Collocations Also deserving of attention in teaching the uses of initial stance adverbials are the lexicogrammatical patterns in which they are found, especially in academic writing, As one example, the stance marker perhaps often collocates with a variety of superlatives + classifier nouns (e.g., perbaps the best approach, perhaps the worst example) in written texts as in these examples from COCA: perhaps + positive superlative: the best strategy: the best llustratio the most convincing case ; the strongest evidence; perhaps + negative superlative: the biggest problem/hurdle/obstacle/sticking point; the greatest| re; the most troubling case itation; the worst perhaps + neutral superlative: the most common type; the most striking difference; the most widely used method By checking collocation patterns of stance adverbials through concordancers such as COCA and the Compleat Lexical Tutor,’ teachers can help students use these lexicogrammatical resources appropriately. ‘The study of adverb clauses in languages of the world by Thompson, Longacre, and Hwang (2007) offers valuable information for ESL/EFL teachers about the ways these clauses are structured, positioned and used across languages. They point out that although “apparently all languages, regardless of their basic word order, have preposed adverbial clauses,” the distributional patterns of preposed clauses differs across languages (p.295). For example, they note that verb-final languages such as Korean and Japanese use clauses infrequently and then only in conversation. They also point out that English tends to use structures that subordinate one proposition to another more frequently than other languages, such as Chinese, do (p. 241). In addition, they discuss grammatical markers required with adverb clauses in some languages; for example, they note that in Turkish arid other languages, before-clauses must inchade a negative marker (p. 248). ‘Thus, English learners may have a variety of challenges structuring and using adverb clauses in English depending on their native languages. Additional challenges are posed by the multiple semantic meanings of some adverb subordinators, such as as, which can express manner, reason, or time. ~ Uses of Adverb Clauses in Writing and Conversation Studies in various areas of linguisties—Corpus Linguistics, Conversational Analysis, and Systemic Functional Linguistics—have identified uses of adverb clauses that are distinct from their uses in written registers. he Grammar BookOne discourse function of adverb clauses unique to conversation is its use by speakers to add a comment to another’s speaker's utterance. Biber et al. (1999) note that conditional adverbials (see Chapter 27) are the most common type that function in this way, representing about 10 percent of all conditional adverb clauses in conversation, as in this example (p. 833): A: | know we're running late, but the traffic’s not too bad, so | think we can still make to the meeting. B: If we're lucky. Other special uses of adverb clauses in conversation were identified by Ford (1993) in her study of 194 clauses. According to Ford, sentence-final adverb clauses with continuing intonation serve to provide new information that qualifies, locates, or completes the meaning of preceding utterances, similar to their use in written discourse. However, sentence-final adverb clauses, produced with their own separate intonation contour, have altogether different fanctions. Such adverb clauses are used either by the same speaker (to self-edit in response to a perceived problem) or by another speaker (to negotiate understanding). Segments exemplifying both of these cases follow: [Ais telling R about his work situation at a TV studio] A: But the thing is, they might get their project canceled. (pause) + Because ABC got bought out. Did you hear about that? (adapted from Ford 1993, p. 111) [UU shows his understanding and agreement with P, whose roommates are out for the night) P: I've got the apartment to myself, and I’m gonna take advantage of it by going to bed early. J: Oh. P: An’ they come home, they gonna talk about it. And I'm gonna go to bed. J: — Before they get there, yeah. (adapted from Ford, 1993, p. 126) Tn summary, Ford (1993) shows us how sentence-final adverb clauses that are separated from the main clause with their own intonation contours play a role in the conversational turn- taking system in English Other uses of adverb clauses in conversation that are distinct from their uses in formal written English registers have been discussed by Schleppegrell (2004). She notes that Because lauses in interactional registers create both internal inks (usually with reference to something previously stated) and external links (evidence for a claim existing outside the text) as written registers do. An example from her data of both types of links is the following from a discussion between children (p. 57): internal link. Well like I have a partner that hardly anybody likes because they make fun of her name external link because it’s Halley, like Halley's comet. Schleppegrell states that the first because in this example “makes an internal link that introduces the reason [the speaker] can make the judgment he has made. His second because, on the other hand, makes an external link by explaining why the children make fun of Halley's name.” (p. 57). She provides this example in the context of a discussion on the need for teachers to be aware of how differently clause-combining operates in conversational registers than in academic genres. As she points out, because clauses in conversation often “carry less semantic weight,” and their conversational uses often do not transfer well to academic registers, in which writers use other kinds of grammatical constructions to convey logical relationships. Schleppegrell’s findings on the range of meanings that because clauses Chapter 25: Adverbials 521522 have in informal registers help to explain some uses of these clauses by ESL/EFL writers and native English-speaking developing writers that are inappropriate for more formal registers. Punctuation with Adverb Clauses In written English, a sentence-initial adverb clause is normally followed by a comma, whereas a sentence-final adverb clause normally is not preceded by a comma, although there is some variation here (when there is a contrast implied, as we have just demonstrated twice in this sentence): After Professor James finished the lecture, he asked for questions from the audience. Professor James asked for questions from the audience after he finished the lecture. ‘These punctuation conventions reinforce the more salient role in discourse that sentence- initial adverbials have. Sometimes, if a sentence-final adverb clause is viewed as an afterthought, it too is set off with a comma: Professor James was willing to answer questions, provided the audience wanted toaskany. Form, Meaning, and Use of Participles Functioning as Adverbials In addition to adverb clauses, adverb phrases, and prepositional phrases, we also need to discuss another structure: ~ing and -en adverbial participles. FORM AND MEANING OF ADVERBIAL PARTICIPLES ‘The ~ing participle has three possible forms: 1. Basic form: working (signals a time overlapping with the time expressed in the main clause), such as: Working diligently on his paper, John began to type up the bibliography. 2. Perfective form: having worked (signals a time preceding the time expressed in the main clause), such as: Having worked on his paper since 4 P.M., John stopped at 8 to watch the DePaul basketball game. 3. Perfective-progressive form (rare): having been working (signals an ac at a time preceding the time expressed in the main clause), such as: Having been working on his paper for more than a week, John decided he would turn it irtwithout further revision. n in progress ‘The -en participle also has three possible forms: 1, Basic form: worn out (signals a reason for the result expressed in the main clause), such as: Worn out from all the work, John decided to relax. 2. Progressive form: being worn out (much like the basic form but with stronger emphasis on the fact that the participle gives a reason or cause for the result expressed in the main clause), such as: Being worn out from all the work, John decided to relax for the evening. The Grammar Book3. Perfective form: having been worn out (signals that the action in the participle is completed before—and is also the reason for—the result expressed in the main clause), such as: Having been worn out from three days’ work on his paper, John decided to relax over the weekend. ‘The basic form is by far the most frequent one for both the -ing and the -en participle. The other forms do occur, however, and grammar texts sometimes erroneously refer to the progressive and perfective forms of the -e7 participle as instances of the ~ing participle because of the initial -ing forms. SENTENCE-INITIAL ADVERBIAL PARTICIPLES ‘The adverbial use of -ing and -en participles in clause-initial position is a potential problem for native as well as nonnative speakers of English. Errors such as the following are traditionally referred to as “dangling modifiers” or “dangling participles,” and they are the bane of many a high school English teacher's existence: Laughing hysterically and unable to answer principal's office. “Torn and bent beyond recognition, | received my mother’s letter. In such cases, the subject of the participle should also be the subject of the main clause. Whenever this is not the case—as in the two examples above—a dangling participle results. Danielson and Porter (1990) have pointed out that such participles can usefally be viewed as reduced fornis of adverb clauses; however, they caution that the reduction is grammatically acceptable only if both clauses have the same underlying subject. With this condition in mind, we can now correct the above sentences: Because Tom was laughing hysterically and unable to answer Miss Fiddich, Tom was sent to the principal's office (by Miss Fiddich). > Laughing hysterically and unable to answer Miss Fiddich, Tom was sent to the principal's office. After my mother’s letter had been torn and bent beyond recognition, my mother’s letter was delivered to me yesterday. — Torn and bent beyond recognition, my mother’s letter was delivered to me yesterday. Both native and nonnative users of English should be given ample opportunity to reduce sentence-initial adverb clauses to participle clauses when the same subject condition is met. Students should also be able to identify clauses that cannot be reduced to participles. Some teachers find it useful to point out to their students the unintended humor that occurs when a dangling participle is interpreted literally; for example: “Following the recipe carefully, my cake was a great success. (= My cake followed the recipe carefully!) *Flattened out of shape by Dmitri’s serve, we could no longer play with the old volleyball. (= We were flattened out of shape by Dmitti’s servel) The same subject participles discussed here are the most common type of sentence- initial adverbial participle; however, it is also possible to have a sentence-initial adverbial participle with a subject that is different from the subject of the main clause. In such a case, the subject of the participle must be overtly stated: iss Fiddich, she sent poor Tom to the The bus drivers being on strike, many people had to get to work using other means of transportation, (Since the bus drivers were on strike, ...) When -en participles are used in this type of construction, only the progressive or perfect form of the participle occurs: Chapter 25: Adverbials524 The house having been constructed poorly, the new owners had to cope with many unexpected repairs. (Since the house had been constructed poorly, ...) Many grammarians refer to the two preceding sentences as absolute constructions, which they carefully distinguish from participle clauses. We see no need to do this since the semantic function of the two clause types is parallel. The only difference is whether the subjects of the two clauses are the same or not. SENTENCE-FINAL ADVERBIAL PARTICIPLE CLAUSES A sentence-final participle clause is normally detached from the main clause by a comma in writing or by special features in speech, such as a pause before the lowered pitch on the participle clause; for example: Laura looked at him, consumed with contempt for what he represented. An old woman shouts out a long apocalyptic interpretation of the: le, prophesying the immediate arrival of the Messianic Kingdom. While the use of a sentence-final participle clause seldom leads to ungrammatical sentences in the way that the use of the “dangling modifier” does, a potential for ambiguity exists in those cases where there is more than one noun in the main clause that could be the antecedent of the underlying subject in the participle clause: ?Meg met Tom in the corridor, laughing heartily about what had happened in class. In the absence of additional context, either Meg or Tent could be the underlying subject of the participle clause in this sentence. Such ambiguity, however, rarely occurs since first of all, the main clause may have only one noun phrase: Betty danced joyfully, never suspecting what was about to happen. Second, for many main clauses with two or more noun phrases, there is usually only one noun phrase that qualifies semantically as the subject of the participle clause: Sheila ignored the dog and the TV set, deeply engrossed in the new book, Even though the main clause in this example contains three noun phrases (i.e., Sheila, the dog, the TV set), only Sheila can serve as the underlying subject of the participle clause—that is, someone who is deeply engrossed in reading a book. Note that all the examples we have given here of sentence-final adverbial participles are of the same noun phrase variety—the subject of the participle clause is identical in reference to one of the noun phrases in the main clause. As shown before with sentence-initial clauses, not all sentence-final participle clauses conform to this pattern; some have an overt subject that is not identical in reference to any noun phrase in the main clause: They decided to wait for dawn, each hiker taking his two-hour turn at watch. ‘She walked along hurriedly, her purse clutched tightly in her arms. Again, we feel that there is no significant difference in structure or function between the examples involving identical noumphrases and nonidentical noun phrases. The identical noun phrases have simply been deleted with the remainder of the clause being reduced to a participle. USE OF ADVERBIAL -ING PARTICIPLE CLAUSES Tn carrying out an extensive study of -ing participle clauses, Thompson (1983) found that they occurred most frequently in descriptive prose and very rarely in factual, scientific writing. For example, she compared 10,000 words of text from two different sources—a historical narrative and a pharmacology text—and found that the former contained 74 ~ing participle clauses while the The Grammar Booklatter contained only 5. (We feel that a similar ratio would be obtained for -en participle clauses if such a count were carried out.) ‘Thompson feels that the differences in frequency can be explained by the discourse function of these participle clauses; namely, they evoke a visual image in the mind of the listener or reader. Thompson's term for this function is “depictive.” She adds that the more formal the language and the more descriptive the discourse, the higher the frequency of participle clauses. A corollary of this functional principle is that participle clauses do not occur frequently in speech, since conversation leaves little opportunity for the planning required to make one’ language evoke images in the listener’ or reader's mind, which is the function of this construction. Form, Meaning, and Use of Preverbal Adverbs of Frequency In Chapter 6, we mentioned the adverbials of frequency that usually occur at the end of a sentence. Some of these adverbials express a specific and others a general sense of frequency: Bob does his laundry once a week. brush my teeth every day. | specific frequency Helen does the dishes once in awhile. You should write your grandparents every now and then. i general frequency If we want to be mote precise, we can refer to such adverbials as “adverbials of specific or general frequency.” Although these adverbials tend to occur at the end of the sentence (ie., the activity is in focus), they may also occur initially if the adverbial of frequency is in focus: Once a week Bob does his laundry. Every now and then you should write your grandparents. FORM OF PREVERBAL ADVERBS OF FREQUENCY In contrast to these adverbials of specific or general frequency, English also has a class of preverbal adverbs of frequency (PAFs) that tend to occur most naturally in the middle of a sentence:"" Josh never writes his parents. Bill has often forgotten to make his bed. Mary is always late for class. I can usually do my shopping on Saturday. As you will see next, the preferred position for such adverbs of frequency is somewhat complicated but predictable. Because of the complexity and crosslinguistic influence, however, misplacement of these forms is a common problem for ESL/EFL learners, who produce ill-formed sentences such as the following: “Always Mary is coming late to class. “Bill has forgotten often to make his bed. The Scope of Preverbal Adverbs Perhaps the most important generalization to make about preverbal adverbs is that in any given sentence, they modify the entire sentence in which they occur. The following paraphrases make this clear: Barry frequently drives faster than the speed limit. (tis frequently the case that Barry drives faster than the speed limit) Cynthia never smiles at strangers. (It is never the case that Cynthia smiles at strangers) Chapter 25: Adverbiols 525526 ‘We can expand our basic phrase structure rule to accommodate preverbal adverbs of frequency in this way: S$ — SUBJ (ADVL) PRED This rule accounts for all indicative and imperative sentences with preverbal adverbs that do not have auxiliary verbs: Gerald seldom goes to church. always do my shopping on Saturday. Never talk with your mouth full. The tree diagram here illustrates this rule. lusually do the shopping on Saturday. SUBJ | = NP Adve AUX We ADVI. | | aN | pro ADV v NP PrepP | | oN I usually -pres do det N prep NP | | | | the shopping on ; Saturday The rule also accounts for all cases where there is an operator (.e., an auxiliary verb or copula be) that carries emphatic or contrastive stress; that is, the preverbal adverb always precedes a stressed auxiliary or copula You never are ready on time! Jim never did talk to Raymond!” I never have met the president! This rule also applies to reduced sentences where the operator occurs in final position, and thus cannot take reduced stress the way it might if it occurred in a complete sentence, e.g., Az \|s Mr. Franks strict? |: L want to be class president. B: Yes, he often is. fou never will (be). (cf. Yes, he is often strict.) (cf.You will never be class president) Adverbs of frequency can also occupy other positions in the sentence for several principled reasons. First of all, there are many cases in which a sentence contains an unstressed operator (an auxiliary verb or be copula). In such cases, the PAF will directly follow this operator as in these examples: Maryis alwayglatefor class. = can usually do ry shopping gn Saturday. Bill has often forgotten to make his bed. Let us look at the tree diagram for one of these sentences: The Grammar Bookcan usually do my shopping on Saturday. suBy_ | | NP AdvP AUK Ww ADVI. | | | aN | pro ADV M oY NP. PrepP. | | | | o™ aN I usually can do det N prep NP | | | ee ere ee Saturday Second, in addition to their position after unstressed operators, some PAFS occur sentence-initially, those that fall into Halliday’s “usuality” category for sentential adverbs (ie., sometimes, occasionally, frequently, usually, generally, regularly). Finally, some PAFs can occur easily in sentence-final position, including sometimes, occasionally, often, and frequently ‘The other PAFS are awkward (usually, rarely, seldom) or ungrammatical (never, always) in final position, However, all preverbal adverbs of frequency can be placed between the subject and the predicate and then adjusted for surface position with respect to the operator, as necessary. In fact, a good piece of evidence for claiming that PAFs initially occur sentence-internally and preverbally are the negative PAFs, which express zero or low frequency: never, seldom, rarely, scarcely ever, and hardly ever. When they are used in initial position for purposes of emphasis, wwe need to invert the subject and the operator in response to the fronting (adding do if no operator is present) to ensure grammaticality." never seldom Wehave | rarely seen sucha sight! scarcely ever hardly ever Never Seldom Rarely have we seen such a sight!" Scarcely ever Hardly ever If the negative PAFs could be directly placed in initial position, there would be no subject- operator inversion, i.e. the inversion is a reaction to the fronting of the negative adverbial, which has been placed medially. Statements and Questions with Ever ‘The particle ever'* interacts with preverbal adverbs of frequency in a number of ways. As shown previously, it is generally used phrasally with scarcely and hardly when they function as preverbal adverbs of frequency: scarcely tob ht. Joan has {sara } ever gone 10 bed after midnig} *Joan has { | gone to bed after midnight. Chapter 25: Adverbials 527528 In such cases, scarcely ever or hardly ever would be placed as phrasal preverbal adverbs in medial position as discussed previously. Ever can also be used in yes/no questions as the most general (ie., least presupposing) of the PAPs: ever sometimes Does Mark ; often sing in the shower? usually always ‘The wh-question for all expressions of frequency (including PAFs) is “how often”: How often does Mark sing in the shower? MEANING OF PREVERBAL ADVERBS OF FREQUENCY Resemblance to Quantification Similar to the quantifiers described in Chapter 17, preverbal adverbs of frequency fall along either the positive or the negative continuum of a scale on which a/ways constitutes the positive extreme and never the negative one. Again, there are several pairs of positive and negative terms that logically contradict each other. (See the diagonal lines in the diagram.) (most) (some) (moch/many) casually fpomerimes | foen | {reneray} all) joceasionally) frequently regularly always POSITIVE low high frequency frequency NEGATIVE, never | prarely fnot usually | not always fnot ever} | seldom potgeneralyt (moval (no) hardly ever | (most... not) scarcely ever| not often (ew/liele) “The dotted line between never and always signals an opposition. The dotted line and arrow going from not akays to sometimes/occasionaly signals an inverse implication (e.g., saying that Jack is not always on time is the same as saying that Jack is sometimes not on time or that Jack is sometimes late).”” Because of the semantic similarities between quantifiers and preverbal adverbs of frequency, a semantically related quantifier is indjcated in parentheses at each point in the diagram. ‘Many sententtes with preverbal adverbs can in fact be paraphrased with sentence-final adverbials containing semantically-related quantifiers: John always gets up at 7 A.M. John gets up at 7 A.M. all the time. Bob sometimes reads the paper. Bob reads the paper some of the time. Students often drink beer. ~ Students drink beer on many occasions. Likewise, the wh-question of frequency “How often?” has its quantifier-based counterpart in “How many times?” How often have yougoneto Boston? How many times have you gone to Boston? The Grammar BookNegation and Preverbal Adverbs ‘As Klima (1964) has pointed out, we can verify the negative or affirmative nature of preverbal adverbs by observing their behavior in unmarked tags, since an affirmative preverbal adverb co-occurs with a negative tag and vice versa: always Jasonis | often late, isn't he? sometimes (ie. these are affirmative preverbal adverbs) never Mavis | seldom goes out, does she? scarcely ever (ie, these are negative preverbal adverbs) Interaction with Not ‘The semantically strongest negative preverbal adverb of frequency (e.g., never) may not co-occur with the negative particle, not, if the not derives from the sentence modifier:"* “i Te does occasionally occur with the not expressing phrasal negation (see Chapter 10): Sandra is never able to not eat chocolates. and it occurs freely with lexical negation (see Chapter 10): Mrs. Beck has never been unkind. (Recall that both phrasal and lexical negation are different from syntactic negation.) The semantically positive preverbal adverbs of frequency, on the other hand, occur not only in affirmative statements but also in negative statements in combination with nor (or -n’t), as the following examples illustrate: is not never on time. 1. a.Florida often | isn't | cold in winter. isnot b. Florida is often not cold in winter. Florida { eat | often cold in winter. isnot hasn't 2. a,Professor Potter usually {pas am | attended faculty meetings. b. Professor Potter has usually not attended faculty meetings. ly attended faculty meetings. c.Professor Potter | hasn't | usu: has not Our current syntactic rules for negation and for PAF placement and movement account for sentences like (1a and b) and (2a and b). In these sentences, the not and the PAF are independently placed and moved, if needed. In the case of (Ic) and (2c), the not appears to be part of a phrasal negative PAF (i.c., not often, not usual) that has been placed medially and moved to post-operator position, Other phrasal PAFs that are a result of combining with nor in this way are: nor aways, not ever, and not generally. USE OF PREVERBAL ADVERBS OF FREQUENCY As the analysis of conversational and written corpora in the Longman Grammar of Spoken and Written English shows, preverbal adverbs of frequency are differently distributed across registers (Biber et al., 1999, p. 796). Those on the extreme ends of the continuum, always and Chapter 25: Adverbials 529530 never are much more frequent in conversational English and fiction than in news or academic prose. For example, never occurs 800 times per million words in conversational English and 1,200 times per million words in fiction, whereas in academic prose, its frequency is only about 200 times per million words. In contrast, usually and often are much more frequent in academic prose than in conversation; in fact, ofiem i rarely used in conversation. This last finding parallels our own investigation of preverbal adverbs in 23,000 words of English conversation, in which often did not occur even once. One preverbal adverb, sometimes, occurs with about equal frequency across registers. ‘These striking differences across registers (especially between conversation and formal written registers) in the use of some preverbal adverbs of frequency reflects in part the need for writers to “hedge” or qualify statements so as not to overgeneralize. While speakers can overgeneralize or even exaggerate claims in conversation (“I would never do that!” “I always try 10 get some exercise.”), writers may be more careful not to do so. English has numerous adverbs that serve to qualify statements, including generally, occasionally, and typically as well as the more common ones previously noted. These uses, then, are related to the epistemic stance adverbials (e.g., perbaps, probably, maybe), which also function to qualify assertions. Interaction with Tense and Aspect Praninskas (1975) points out that since preverbal adverbs of frequency are used to express approximately how many times a habitual action or condition is repeated, they are typically not used with the progressive aspect. Instead, simple present tense, present perfect, and simple past (in its habitual sense) tend to co-occur with these adverbs: Professor Johnson is always busy. Joe often studied ur Ihave never visited Japan. In fact, we would add that all adverbials of frequency—not just the preverbal adverbs—tend to co-occur with tenses that are used to express habitual action: Horace goes to the movies once a week. Alberta drank champagne every now and then. While we agree in principle with Praninskas’s (1975) generalization, we would, however, point out that the progressive aspect may co-occur with preverbal adverbs of frequency when, the speaker's message carries emotional overtones (see Chapter 7): 1 Compare this with the less emotional, more objective sentence: idnight. is always hearing noises. (ic., he hallucinates) Orville always hears noises. (i.c., he has a keen sense of hearing) The preverbal adverb of highest frequency (i.e., akvas), also closely resembles certain adverbs that express duration or iteration, although afways is less emphatic than continually or constantly: always . always Sydney is | continually | grouchy. Martha | continually | loses tl constantly = constantly (durative: a continuing state of affairs) (iterative: a series of events) Sentence-Initial Use of PAFs Several~though not all—preverbal adverbs of frequency sometimes occur in initial position. What does such initial position signal? Close (1981) suggests that logical contradiction is a likely environment for a sentence- initial preverbal adverb: A: Peter is always on time. B: No, Peter isn’t always on time. Sometimes he's late. The Grammar BookWhile this seems to be a reasonable suggestion, Lee's (1991) research on sometimes certainly argues that sentence-initial use of PAFs can signal other important discourse organizing functions, especially if they occur at the beginning of a paragraph or episode. Some Other Discourse Considerations Many reference grammars and ESL/EFL textbooks state that bow often begins a wh-question that asks about frequency. What they usually do not point out is that such questions tend to elicit responses containing specific (or general) adverbials of frequency rather than preverbal adverbs of frequency. In fact, a response with a preverbal adverb could be considered vague, evasive, or even rude: A: How often do you go to the movies? : [go about once a week. 21 go (fairly) often. study there every night. A: How often do you study in thelibrary?—B: {i Reeereauptiores The above questions begin with “How often do you . . ..” and they are asking about the frequency of current habitual activities. There are other questions beginning with “How often...” that involve the perfect of experience; a specific or general frequency is expected in the response. Again, most preverbal adverbs are inappropriate, and ahvays is impossibl A:How often have you been to Acapulco? Three times. Many times. B: | ?Seldom. ?Frequently. always. Yes/no questions with ever—like the “How often . . .?” questions—may ask about either specific experiences or the frequency of habitual actions: ‘Specific experience: Have you ever been to Acapulco? Frequency: Do you ever study in the library? Yés/no questions with ever that ask about specific experiences tend to elicit specific responses—again, responses with a preverbal adverb of frequency are too vague: ‘A: Have you ever been to Acapulco? Yes, for one week back in 1991. sometimes 7es,1 j usually | gothere. On the other hand, yes/no questions with ever that ask about the frequency of habitual actions readily elicit responses with a preverbal adverb of frequency, and they are the only questions with ever that can do this: A: Do you ever study in the library? always usually often t sometimes aes rarely never Therefore preverbal adverbs are not normally elicited by wb-questions and can be naturally clicited by only one type of yes/no question (i.e., questions about the frequency of habitual actions). This observation has ramifications for teaching since we want our students to Chapter 25: Adverbials 531532 practice using preverbal adverbs in contexts that are as natural as possible. Clearly we need 4 comprehensive discourse analysis of the use of preverbal adverbs in English speech and writing that will give us some of the information we have about other adverbials. Conclusion This chapter has expanded on our brief earlier discussions about adverb phrases, prepositional phrases used adverbially, and adverb clauses. We have shown that these three adverbial structures can occur both sentence-finally and sentence-initially, with different implications for the organization of discourse. We have also included a discussion of participles functioning as adverbials to complement our earlier discussion of participles functioning as adjectives in Chapter 20. In the final section of this chapter, we have introduced preverbal adverbs of frequency (PAFS), an important sub-class of adverbials, which are sentential in scope and which overlap semantically with the quantifiers presented in Chapter 17. All PAFs are placed medially between the subject and the predicate; many of them can also appear sentence-initially where they function to reflect speaker stance, and a few of them can occur sentence-finally. Adverbials will be the topic of the following two chapters on logical connectors, Chapter 26, and conditionals, Chapter 27. We will encounter adverbials again as a special type of relative clause in Chapter 29 and in the two chapters that deal with degree constructions (Chapters 34 and 35). As we said at the outset of this chapter, adverbials are a large and diffuse category. ‘More is on the way! Teaching Suggestions 1. Form. Miller (1991) suggests having learners unscramble sentences, putting the adverbials after the verb; each scrambled sentence contains two adverbials for which possible orderings can be discussed (pp. 75-77); for example: sometimes/John/to the beach/goes Jumped/the cat/into the car/through the window in the spring/salmon/upstream/swim ‘Mr. Chaves/from Peru/immigrated/ten years ago 2. Form. To help learners see the relationship between adjectives and adverbs of manner, have them convert sentences with adverbs to sentences with adjectives, and vice versa: John is a careful worker > John works carefully. Sheila dances gracefully — Sheila is a graceful dancer. 3. Form, Danielson, and Porter (1990) suggest providing students with a text where the adverbials come at the end of each sentence in parentheses in a scrambled order. The students have to rewrite the paragraph inserting the adverbials in appropriate places (p. 195): San Francisco is cool (in the summer, usually). The skies are overcast, and the fog rolls off the bay to cover the city (in the morning, almost always, completely, often). However, the weather turns warm and sunny (sometimes). 4, Meaning. Thewlis 2007) suggests that students interview a classmate to find out things that he or she does based on adverbial prompts of time, place and manner, such as every day, before bedtime, outdoors, very well, or with considerable difficulty. The interviewer should write complete sentences about the activities and report them to the class (p. 35). The Grammar Book5. Meaning. Sharon Voss (personal communication) suggests that the teacher prepare large flasheards—each with a preverbal adverb of frequency. When each student has a flashcard, the class members must first arrange themselves into a positive group and a negative group. ‘Then, within each of the two groups, they should order themselves from high to low frequency according to the meanings of the preverbal adverbs of frequency on their flashcards. Each student then says an original sentence using his or her preverbal adverb of frequency and, iff necessary, receives comments and corrections from peers. The teacher should also get the students to discuss the appropriateness of the sentences containing the preverbal adverbs (eg.,“Would an alternative sound better?” 6. Form/Meaning. Have students work in groups to describe events that surround some notable event such as an earthquake, an election, the Olympics, or the World Cup. Ask them to use preverbal adverbs of frequency to describe the related events. For example: An earthquake Some animals always know when an earthquake is going to occur. People sometimes panic during an earthquake. Homes and buildings are often damaged by an earthquake. ‘Use. Have students consult a collocations dictionary or online concordance such as the Compleat Lexical Tutor (wwwlextutor.ca) or COCA (www.corpus.byu.edu/coca) to learn what circumstance adverbials co-occur frequently with common verbs. The choice of verbs can depend on student levels and learning contexts. Ask them to write down four or five adverbials for each verb. If time permits, they can write sentences or choose several to use in a paragraph. Or to conduct the activity in a shorter time, assign just one word to pairs ot groups and ask them to share their findings. Students can also be asked to volunteer verbs to check. For example: ‘complain: bitterly, loudly, constantly, repeatedly laugh: out loud, heartily, hysterically, nervously, uncontrollably speak: briefly, quietly, softly, loudly, eloquently study (as in examine): carefully, closely, in depth, extensively fast, slowly, regularly, widely, independently work: steadily, effectively, efficiently, satisfactorily worry: a lot, slightly, terribly, needlessly, unnecessarily (All examples are from Oxford Col- locations Dictionary for Students of English, Oxford University Press, 2002) 8. Use. As a noticing task for helping writers develop an awareness of the importance of hedging in academic writing, Frodesen and Wald (2015) suggest giving students pairs of sentences in which the first sentence does not use a hedging adverb expressing possibility or frequency, but the second one does. Ask students to discuss why the hedges are important, given the information expressed in the sentences. For example: 1, a. Reducing intake of animal fat will lead to better health. 'b. Reducing intake of animal fat will potentially lead to better health. 2. a. An African lion in the wild lives for 16~18 years, b, An African in the wild typically lives for 16-18 years. Chapter 25: Adverbials 533534 9. Use. To practice the stance marker perhaps in its patterned usage with superlatives (perbaps [one of] the best/iggest/most + classifier NP is...), give students a list of phrases with a variety of superlatives and classifier nouns (e.g., example, experience, problem). Ask them to choose and complete one or more phrases by writing sentences; then ask them to share their responses with the class for comments and questions. Create phrases that reflect your students’ proficiency levels, backgrounds, interests and goals for learning English. This activity could be expanded as an in-class writing or out-of-class assignment by asking students to write a paragraph describing or explaining the sentence they wrote. For example: © Perhaps one of the most striking differences between my life in my home country and Ithe country | now live in] is... Perhaps the greatest difficulty | have experienced in learning English is... * Perhaps one of the best examples of traditional Mexican food is. Perhaps the most common stereotype people have of Americans in my home country is... Pethaps the biggest problem | had in adju: college/living in a dormitory... \g to a new country/a new home/ 10. Use. ‘To practice using sentential adverbials for expr~sing attitude and stance, give students a list of three or four statements that would elicit such responses. Ask them to work in pairs or small groups and choose one or more statements to list as many responses as they can. Provide several examples of responses to a statement as models. For example: Context Response(s) The American Cancer Society estimates * Perhaps that's an understatement. that at least 20 percent ofall cancers * Of course, if you include tobacco as could be prevented by proper diet. part of diet, the percentage goes way up. * Sometimes | wonder what these numbers are based on. Exercises ‘Test your understanding of what has been presented. 1. Provide original sentences that illustrate the following terms or rules. Underline the pertinent word(s) in your examples. a. sentence-initial ) adverb phrase (ii) prepositional phrase -_ ) adverb*clause b, sentence-final (i) adverb phrase prepositional phrase )) adverb clause ©. specific or general adverbial of frequency The Gratnmar Book4. preverbal adverb of frequency (i) positive (ii) negative e. phrasal preverbal adverb of frequency (i) positive (ii.) negative £. adverbial participle 2. Why are the following sentences or dialogues ungrammatical? a, “Is not he ever going to finish his degree? b, *Marvin does often not dance. ©. A: Are you ever late to class? B: *lam never. Test your ability to apply what you know. 3. Ifyour students produce the following sentences, what norms of Standard English have they not followed, and how would you help them to become aware of them? a, “José can play sometimes handball after work. b, *Rarely we can eat outside in the garden, ©. ‘I speak fluently French. . “We enjoy going in Boston to seafood restaurants. e. *Crying hysterically, the mother tried to calm the little girl down. 4. What is the difference in meaning, if any, between the sentences in each of the following pairs? a. Alice uses dental floss. Alice always uses dental floss, 1b, Sometimes we need to think before we act. We sometimes need to think before we act. ¢, When I think about Sybil, I get very angry. I get very angry when I think about Sybil. 5. What, if anything, is inappropriate with the responses to these two questions? What is the explanation for any problem you detect? a. A: How often do you go to the beach? B: Usually. b, A: Have you ever been to Europe? B: Sometimes 6. A student asks you if there is any difference between these two sentences, and if so, when he should use one form rather than the other. What will you say? a. Ihave always told the truth. b, I always have told the truth. 7. A student asks you which of these two sentences is correct. What will you say? a. Iwatch the news at 10 ps. every day. b, I watch the news every day at 10 p.m. Chapter 25: Adverbials 535536 Bibliography REFERENCES — Barbaresi, L. (1987). “Obviously” and “certainly”: Two different functions in argumentative discourse. Folia Linguistica, 2K), 3-24 Biber, D., Johansson, S., Leech, G., Conrad, C., & Finegan, E. (1999). Longman grammar of spoken and ‘written English. Harlow, Essex, England: Pearson Education Ld, Chafe, W., & Nichols, J. Eds. (1986). Bvidentiality: The linguistic coding of epistemology. Norwood, NJ ABLEX, Close, R.A. (1981). Englisb asa foreign language (3rd ed.). London, England: Allen and Unwin. Danielson, D., & Porter, P. (1990). Using English (2nd ed.). Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall Regents. Davies, M. (2008). The corpus of contemporary American English (COCA): 425 million words, 1990-present. Retrieved from http://corpus.byu.edu/coca/ Diessel, H. (2008). Iconicity of sequence: A corpus-based analysis of the positioning of temporal adverbial clauses in English. Cognitive Linguistics, 193), 465-490. Downing, A. (2001). “Surely you knew!”: Surely as a marker of evidenti Language, 8(2), 253-285. Ennst, TB. (1984). Towards an integrated theory of adverb position in Englisk. Bloomington, IN: University of Indiana Linguistics Club. Ford, C. E. (1993). Grammar in interaction: Adverbial clauses in American English conversation. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. Greenbaum, S. (1969). Studies in English adverbial usage. London, England: Longman. Halliday, M.A. K. & Matthiessen, C.M. I. M. (2014). Halliday's introduction to fanctional grammar (4th ed.). London, England: Edward Arnold. Hasselgard, H. (2010). Adjunct adverbials in English. Cambridge, England: Jacobs, R. (1995). English syntax: A grammar for English language professionals. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press, Klima, B. (1964). Negation in English. In J. Fodor & J. Katz.(Eds.), The structure of language (pp. 243-323). Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall. Koktova, E. (1986a). Sentence adverbials in a functional description. Amsterdam, Netherlands: John Benjamins. Koktova, E. (1986b). Remarks on the semantics of sentence adverbials. Journal of Pragmatics, 10(1), 127-40. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. Lee, D.K. (1991).A discourse analysis of seven English sentential adverbs (Unpublished master's thesis). University of California, Los Angeles, CA. Liu, D. & Espino, M. (2012). Actually, genuinely, really, and truly. International Journal of Corpus Linguistics, 17Q), 198-228. Lyons, J. (1979), Semantics Vol. 2). Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. Miller, D. 0. (1991). Audiscourse analysis of ifause-final multiple adverbials (Unpublished master's thesis) University of California, Los Angeles, CA. Palmer, FR. (1988). Mood and modality. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. Praninskas, J. (1975). Rapid review of English grammar. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall Quirk, R., Greenbaum, S. Leech, G., & Svartvik, J.(1985). A comprebensive grammar of the English language. London, England: Longman. Schleppegrell, M. (2004). The language of schooling: A functional linguistics perspective. Mahwab, NJ: Erlbaum. ‘Simon-Vandenbergen, A. (1992). The interactional utility of ofcourse in spoken discourse. Occasional Papers in Systemic Linguistics, 6, 213-226. Simon-Vandenbergen, A. (2008), Almast certainly and most definitely: Degree modifiers and epistemic stance. Journal of Pragmatics, 40, 1521-1542. ity and stance. Functions of sambridge University Press. The Grammar BookSimon-Vandenbergen, A., & Aimer, K. (2007). The semantic field of modal certainty: A corpus-based study of English adverts. Berlin, Germany: Mouton de Gruyter, ‘Thewlis, S. 2007). Grammar dimensions: Form, meaning, and use 3 (4th ed.). Boston, MA: Heinle, Cengage Learning. ‘Thompson, 5), 55-8: A. (1985). Grammar in written discourse: Initial vs. final purpose clauses in English. Tex, ‘Thompson, S.A., Longacre, R., & Hwang, S, (2007). Adverbial clauses. In‘T: Shopen (Ed), Compler constructions: Language typology and syntactic description (2nd ed., Vol. 2, pp. 237-300). Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. For useful overviews of linguistic and grammatical analysis of adverbials, see: Buysschaert, J. (1982). Criteria for the clasifcation of English adverbial. Brussels, Belgium: Paleis der ‘Academien, Ernst, T: B. (1984). Towards an integrated theory of adverb position in English. Bloomington, IN: University of Indiana Linguistics Club. Nilsen, D. L. F (1972). English adverbials. The Hague, Netherlands: Mouton. For useful information on usage, see: Ford, C. E. (1993). Grammar in interaction: Adverbial dauses in American English conversation. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. Greenbaum, S. (1969). Studies in English adverbial usage. London, England: Longman. Koktova, E. (1986). Sentence adverbials in a functional description. Amsterdam, Netherlands: John Benjamins. For research that investigates stance adverbials across academic genres and disciplines, see: Hyland, K. (2004). Disciplinary discourses: Social interaction in academtc writing. Ann Arbor, MI: University of ‘Michigan Press. Hyland, K. & C. $. Guinda (Eds.). (2012). Stance and voice in written academic genres. New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan. For information on negative preverbal adverbs of frequency, see: Klima, E. (1964). Negation in English. In J. Fodor & J. Katz (Eds.). The structure of language (pp. 246-323). Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, For explanations and exercises for learners on adverbial phrases and clauses and also on using adverbs and aspect to indicate time relationships, see: ‘Thewlis, S. (2007). Grammar dimensions: Form, meaning, and use 3 (4th ed.). Boston, MA: Heinle, Cengage Learning, For a content-based lesson on adverbs of frequency, see: Firsten, R. 2008). Grammar connection: Structure through content 2, Boston, MA: Heinle, Cengage Learning. For explanations and activities focused on adverb clauses in advanced grammar and writing, see: Bland, S. K. (with Savage, A., & Meyers, P). (2008). Grammar sense: Advanced grammar and writing 4. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. For explanations and activities using stance adverbials in academic writing, see: Frodesen, J,, & Wald, M. (2015). Exploring options: Vocabulary and grammar for academic iting. Ann Arbor, ‘MI: University of Michigan Press. Fora discussion of adverbs frequently used in acader Hinkel, E. 2004). Teaching academic ESL woriting: Practical teconiques in vocabulary and grammar. Mahwab, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. 19, see: Chapter 25: Adverbials 337538 Endnotes 1. The term preverbal adverb of frequency comes from the work of Klima (1964). 2. All the @ symbols represent obligatorily or optionally deleted prepositions of the types described in Chapter 21. 3. This is an equative degree clause functioning adverbially (see Chapter 35), not the usual subordinate adverb clause consisting of an adverb subordinator followed by a full sentence. 4, Recall that because ofis a complex preposition of the type described and diagrammed in Chapter 21 '5, Note that this is a nonfinite adverb clause, different from the usual adverb clause (an adverts subordinator followed by a full finite sentence). Jacobs (1995) points out that nonfinite subordinate clauses often lack an overt subordinator (p. 67): She locked the door (50 as) to prevent any more intrusions, 6. The other major syntactic means of introducing speaker stance and attitude toward propositions in English are via modals/phrasal modals, You may be right and via the short introductory clauses that can precede noun clause complements: I's possible he was injured; | think youte right. (See Chapter 31.) 7. This includes frequency," which we treat in our discussion of preverbal adverbs of frequency. Biber et al. present a number of subcategories for epistemic, such as doubt/certainty, actuality, and imprecision, The Compleat Lexical Tutor (wwwlextutor.ca), developed by Tom Cobb, is a website with, among other vocabulary learning resources, a concordancer for investigating patterns of words and phrases in a number of written and spoken corpora, both American and British English, 10. We have not provided phrase structure descriptions for many general and specific adverbials of frequency, such as oncea week, once ina while, and, every now and then, because their analysis is simply 100 complicated to be worth doing, 11. Note that whereas adverbials of specific or general frequency tend to be phrases (with exceptions such as weekly, yearly, daily, hourly), preverbal adverbs of frequency tend to be single words, although they may take adverbs and thereby form adverbial phrases (e.g. very often or almost always). Sometimes both types of adverbs of frequency occur in statements of habitual action, e.g. usually do my laundry once week. When this happens, the preverbal adverb is modifying the specific adverbial of frequency; in other words, preverbal adverbs of frequency modify the entire sentence—they do for the sentence what quantifiers do for the noun phrase—whereas general or specific adverbials of frequency modify the activity expressed in the verb phrase, ‘There are also some prepositional phrases semantically similar to the preverbal adverbs generally and usually that typically occur in initial position: Asarule, wal ver or dinner. {tent | sehr stern 12. Note that in this example, the auxiliary verb do has been added via do support to carry the emphatic stress as well as the tense, For further discussion of this function of do, see Chapter 30. Also, with emphatic do as operator, there is one other possible ordering in strong agreement rejoinders that the rules do not predict: Yes, she does always do that! For some reason, often is more awkward than these other adverbs when used sentence-initially (?Often Mary jogs in the morning) even thaugh itis in the same semantic category. The somewhat archaic equivalent form oftentimes seems to work better in initial position than often, 14, Negative preverbal adverbs are not the only negative forms that cause subject/operator inversion when fronted. Most, ifnot all, negative constituents have this effect in English: 13, ___ Not since the tsunami has such destruction been seen, 15. Note that notall sentences containing never, rarely, etc, may undergo this change of word order. The speaker or writer typically must be expressing an exclamation of sorts; if not, the fronting of the negative PAF and the inversion are strange: John has never traveled abroad. —_?Never has John traveled abroad. ‘The Grammar Book16. Ever can function on its own as.a PAF in questions and after not/-n't 17. Everis not listed on the semantic continua for preverbal adverbs of frequency because itis midway between the positive and negative lexical items. It occurs mainly in questions or negatives or as a part of phrasal combinations with not, hardly, or scarcely. 18. This impossible combination may be due to the fact that historically neveris a lexicalized form of not + ever. Chapter 25: Adverbials 539