Discourse Functions of Adverbial Placement in English. Clause-Initial Adverbials of Time and ...

411 Pages·2012·6.22 MB·English

DOCUMENT RESUME
ED 358 696
FL 021 012
AUTHOR
Virtanen, Tuija
TITLE
Discourse Functions of Adverbial Placement in
English. Clause-Initial Adverbials of Time and Place
in Narratives and Procedural Place Descriptions.
PUB DATE
Dec 92
NOTE
411p.
PUB TYPE
Books (010)
EDRS PRICE
MFO1 /PC17 Plus Postage.
DESCRIPTORS
*Adverbs; *Context Clues; *Discourse Analysis;
*English; *Grammar; Sentence Structure; *Written
Language
IDENTIFIERS
*Clauses
ABSTRACT
An analysis of adverbial placement in written
contemporary English focuses not on the sentence or clause context,
as in conventional analyses, but on the textual or discoursal
influences on placement. Specifically, the study examines:
(1) the
major textual and discoursal motivations behind clause-initial
placement of adverbials of time and place in two types of text
(narratives and procedural place descriptions);
(2) central notions
such as text strategy, text type, or text-strategic continuity;
(3)
a
text typology for study of texts; and (4) contributions to general
knowledge of text and discourse. An introductory chapter describes
basic concepts of text and discourse under consideration. In chapter
2, adverbials are viewed t -om a sentence-grammar perspective. Chapter
3 outlines the study's methods and materials, and text strategy is
discussed in general terms in chapter 4. In chapters 5-7, the textual
and discourse factors are discussed individually with respect to
their effects on adverbial placement. Chapter 5 presents a typology
of texts, and chapter 6 looks at text-strategic continuities in four
sample texts. Information dynamics, or the distribution of given and
new information within a text, are considered in chapter 7, and the
final chapter synthesizes the interplay of the different factors in
text processing. A sample text and analyses are appended. (MSE)
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AL
T -ija Virtanen is at present
acting as a senior lecture
in the Department of English
Swedish-language
at Abo Akademi (the
university of Finland)
in Abo, Finland.
Abo Akademi University Press
Kaskisgatan 2 C 14,
SF-20700 Abo/Turku, Finland
Tel. [phone], fax [phone]
Distribution: Tibo-Trading,
PR 33, SF-21601 Pargas, Finland
[phone], fax [phone]
Fel.
Cover design: Tove Ahlback
DISCOURSE FUNCTIONS OF
ADVERBIAL PLACEMENT IN ENGLISH
'6.
Tuija Virtanen
Discourse Functions of
Adverbial Placement
in English
Clause-Initial Adverbials of Time and Place
in Narratives and Procedural
Place Descriptions
AKADEMISK AVHANDLING
som med tillstind av Humanistiska fakulteten
vid Abo Akademi framINgges till offe.itlig granskning
i Gadolinia, Auditorium A, Porthastsgaan 3-5,
lordagen den 16 januari 1993 kl 12.
ABO
ABO AKADEM IS FORLAG - ABO AKADEM I UNIVERSITY PRESS
5
Discourse Functions of
Adverbial Placement
in English
Clause-Initial Adverbials of Time and Place
in Narratives and Procedural
Place Descriptions
by
Tuija Virtanen
ABO
ABO AKADEMIS FORLAG - ABO AKADEMI UNIVERSITY PRESS
CIP Cataloguing in Publication
Virtanen, Tuija
Discourse functions of adverbial placement in
English : clause-initial adverbials of time and place
in narratives and procedural place descriptions /
by Tuija Virtanen. - Abo : Abo Akademis forlag, 1992.
Diss. : Abo Akademi.
ISBN 952-9616-20-1
UDK 800.852:801.56:802.0(043)
ISBN 952-9616-20-1
Gillot Oy
Abo 1992
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The present study has been written within the framework of Professor.
Nils Erik Enkvist's project "Style and Text as Structure and Process" at
Abo Akademi. Since September 1985 I have had the privilege of working
under optimal circumstances at the Research Institute of the Abo Akademi
Foundation. The project officially lasted three years, and the present work
is a revised and expanded version of my unpublished Licentiate thesis,
which was comnleted in 1988. One of the outcomes of the project are the
close contacts between its members, from which I have continued to
benefit during the process of writing this thesis. Looking back at those
I wish to acknowledge the fact that the present study
precious years,
would not have been written without such an inspiring framework.
I cannot express my gratitude enough to Professor Enkvist for including
me in his research group and thus providing me with the best post-
graduate guidance possible. He originally suggested the topic to me and
he has continued to show a tireless interest in my work even after the
project ended. He has offered invaluable advice and encouragement, and
his detailed and wide-ranging comments have repeatedly helped me to see
the core of the problem at hand and to put it in a larger linguistic perspec-
tive.
I owe a special debt of gratitude to my friends and colieagues in the
research group "Style and Text". In particular, I wish to single out fruitful
discussions with Martina Bjorklund and Brita WArvik. I have also greatly
benefited from the advice, criticisms, and unfaltering support of the other
members of the research group and all those who have taken part in the
seminars organized by Professor Enkvist.
Associate Professor Marita Gustafsson and Professor Kay Wikberg
acted as examiners of my Licentiate thesis. I wish to thank them for their
comments and suggestions which compelled me to reconsider a number of
important aspects of the study. Before publication, the manuscript of the
present thesis was examined by Professor Gunnel Tottie and Professor
Kay Wikberg. I thank them for their comments which have improved the
work.
Ingegerd B5cklund has always shown a keen interest in my work. She
has read my Licentiate thesis and given me helpful comments. I am also
indebted to Fredrik Ulfhielm, who spent a large part of his summer read-
ing one of the latest versions of the manuscript. His questions made me
rethink a number of issues and clarify the exposition.
There are other people I could mention here, as many individual ideas
in this work Lave emerged from informal discussions. The final version of
the book is considerably better for the efforts cf all those who have pro-
vided me with comments, but there are points where I have been unable
to follow their advice. I am, of course, alone responsible for the short-
comings of the present study.
I wish to thank Christopher and Kristiina Moseley who helped me to
find native speakers of English and who administered part of the text-seg-
mentation test. My thanks also go to all the subjects, who kindly com-
pleted the task.
I should also like to offer my thanks to Kristina Toivonen for her help
and efficiency in practical matters. And Stefan Malmberg put his native
speaker stylistic competence into checking the English of my thesis,
which I gratefully acknowledge.
I am g, awful to the following for permission to reproduce copyright
material: Elsevier Science Publishers B.V., Amsterdam, for portions of
text from my article "Given and new information in adverbials: Clause-in-
itial advcrbials of time and place", Journal of Pragmatics 17:2 (1992), pp.
99-115; Mouton de Gruyter, Berlin, for portions of text and a figure (Fig.
3 in the present study) from my article "Issues of text typology: Narrative
a 'basic' type of text?" Text 12:2 (1992), pp. 293-310; Walker Books
Limited, London, for the entire text of a retold version of Three Bears, by
Wendy Boase, 1983. Despite every effort, I have, unfortunately, had no
success in tracing the copyright holder of the second sample narrative
"The cats who stayed for dinner", which is reprinted in the Appendix.
I am pleased to ackr ,wledge with gratitude a research grant from the
Academy of Finland during Professor Enkvist's project and another three-
year research post from 1989 to 1992. Thanks are also due to the Re-
search Institute of the Abo Akademi Foundation for first-class working
facilities in a pleasant environment. For the funding of my participation in
several international conferences, which have contributed to my work in
many ways, I am indebted to the Academy of Finland, the H.W. Donner
Fund and the Research Institute of the Abo Akademi Foundation. Finally,
it is my pleasant duty to thank the Abo Akademi University Press for
including this book in their series. Tove Ahlback has kindly designed the
cover.
There are no words I could use to express my most heartfelt thanks to
those dear to me, who have borne with me, and still do. My parents, Brita
and Erkki Virtanen, have never questioned the necessity of my spending
most of my time working on this study, year after year. And my husband,
Fredrik Ulfhielm, has been a continuous source of encouragement and
support. He has put up with my working hours and the states of mind
connected with thc process. Thank you, Fredrik, for still being my hus-
band.
Tuija Virtanen
Turku/Abo, December 6, 1992