Comments on Nonfinite Adverbial Patterns in English Prose Fiction: A Simple Model for Analysis and Use

Abstract

This study aims to present an accessible model of some frequent nonfinite adverbial types occurring in English prose fiction. As its main syntactic argument, it recognizes that these adverbials are mostly elliptical in that there are some dependent-clause markers one can assume to be implicit when supplying those elements back into the clause complex. Some comments are provided at the end on the interfaces existing between these adverbials and other systems and forces in language. These marry up with linguistic and discursive concepts like rank-shifting, necessary indeterminacy, and ambiguity as an integral part of literary semiosis, figures of speech, stylistic parallelism, cohesion, and so on. This study affords better and deeper insights into the nature of the clause and the creative verbal play brought off in natural situations of use. It also has implications for advanced students and teachers of English, program/syllabus designers and evaluators, linguists, and applied linguists.