This book explores the usage patterns and functions of medially-placed linking adverbials in written academic English. It shows that medial placement can be regarded as a focusing strategy and that different medial positions are associated with distinct discourse functions, such as the marking of the information structure of a sentence.
In Present-Day English, the only flexible sentence constituent in unmarked
declarative sentences is the adverbial, which can often be placed in initial, medial, or end position. This book presents the first empirical and corpus-based study on the usage patterns and functions of medially-placed linking adverbials in conceptually-written academic English. By combining quantitative with detailed qualitative analyses of selected corpus examples, the present study explores whether the placement of linking adverbials in medial position can be regarded as a focusing strategy, similar to focusing adverbs and cleft sentences. Moreover, it investigates whether different medial positions are associated with distinct discourse functions, such as the marking of contrastive topics or different
focus meanings.
Introduction - Linking Adverbials - Interplay between Adverbial Placement and Information Structure - Material and Method - Positional Distribution of Linking Adverbials in Written Academic English: Overview - The Central Case of however: Usage Patterns and Functions - by contrast, in contrast, on the contrary, and on the other hand: Usage Patterns and Functions - nevertheless: Usage Patterns and Functions - in other words and in short: Usage Patterns and Functions - furthermore and moreover: Usage Patterns and Functions - Factors Influencing the Variation between Initial and Medial Position - Medially-Placed Markers of Epistemicity and Evidentiality: Usage Patterns and Functions - Conclusion - References .
Carolin Harthan holds a PhD degree in English Linguistics and Medieval English Literature from the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München (LMU Munich), where she has been working as a research assistant at the Chair of English Linguistics and Medieval Literature. Her research interests include adverbial placement, information structure, pragmatics, and syntax.
