"Absoluteness" of the Absolute Construction in Present-Day English: a Corpus-Based Analysis

Abstract

The article focuses on the question of presence / absence of referential relations (coreference) between the unaugmented absolute construction and its matrix clause in Present-day English. Based on a representative sample from the corpus of the English language BYU-BNC, the traditional approach to the absolute construction as an "independent" structure that has no connection with the rest of the sentence is reconsidered. The analysis of referential relations between the unaugmented absolute construction and its matrix clause has established that cases of coreference (full and partial) significantly outweigh the cases of absence of coreference. These findings indicate that the construction is semantically / logically related to its matrix clause. Furthermore, the obtained data show that meronimic (part-whole) relations prevail in the analysed sample. More precisely, the relations of the types "component - integral object" and "member - collection" are the most numerous. The obtained results suggest that in Present-day English unaugmented absolute constructions compensate lack of syntactic connection with the matrix clause with closer semantic relations, explicitly expressed by complete or partial coreference. In our further research on the issue we intend to carry out a similar analysis for the English augmented absolute constructions in order to determine prevailing types of coreference between them and the matrix clause.