The positioning of adverbials: Discourse function ...

To appear in: Sarda, L., Carter-Thomas, S., Fagard, B. and Charolles, M. (Eds.) (2014). Adverbials in Use: From Predicative to Discourse Functions. Louvain: Presses universitaires de Louvain. http://pul.uclouvain.be/en/livre/?GCOI=29303100360490

CHAPTER 5

The positioning of adverbials: Discourse function reconsidered Peter Crompton American University of Sharjah

Abstract This chapter reports research into two hypotheses about the role of initial positioning of adverbials in discourse processing, analyzing adverbial tokens in a corpus of English newspaper editorial pages. The first hypothesis tested is that initial position is one of a cluster of signals, including orthographic paragraph boundary, which segment discourse. Assuming some overlap between the properties of (a) having extended discourse scope and (b) segmenting discourse, the findings indicate some support for the theory in the case of non-clausal adverbials. The second hypothesis is that initial placement of clausal adverbials occurs in order to facilitate retrospective textual reference. The findings indicate limited support for this theory. Adverbial positioning seems text-type sensitive and probably the outcome of competing processing motivations. Keywords: adverbial, adverbial clause, discourse, framework, scope,

1. Background Adverbials in English (taken here to include adverbial clauses) may appear in different positions in the clause, initially, finally, and sometimes medially. What communicative function is served by these options? While it is generally agreed that such a function is related to discourse management, making that function explicit has proved problematic. It has been argued that initial position for adverbials confers an extended discourse scope for the adverbial, while final position confers only a local scope (Thompson 1985; Downing 1991). Arising from this global vs. local scope contrast it has been argued that initial positioning of an adverbial signals a boundary between textual segments. The metaphor of “framework” (Lowe 1987; Downing 1991) or “framing” (Charolles et al. 2005) is often used to express this discourse function of initial adverbial placement. This account of the discourse function of adverbial positioning options has been contested, however. Verstraete (2004) looks particularly at adverbial clauses (ACs) but suggests that “the

Crompton

Positioning of adverbials: Discourse function reconsidered

parameter of scope and its functional reflections seem to be generalizable across the domain of adverbials in English” (2004: 849). He claims that “the correlation between final position and local function is overstated in the literature” (2004: 838), pointing out that while initial ACs usually have discursive scope this does not mean that final ACs do not have discursive scope. Crompton (2006) developed a procedure for assessing whether adverbials exerted scope over subsequent text sentences and analyzed the scoping behavior of various kinds of adverbials in initial and non-initial position in a small corpus of written expository texts. This procedure was based on the claim that adverbials automatically exert scope over successive sentences in a text until they are canceled. It was argued that cancellation (Fries 1995) is effected by a variety of mechanisms, such as change of tense, another adverbial, and encapsulation (Sinclair 1993): in the absence of identifiable cancellation each sentence following one in which an adverbial occurred was analyzed as falling under the scope of the earlier adverbial. Based on findings using this procedure, Crompton argued that evidence for the hypothesized pairings of initial position/discourse scope and final position/local scope was lacking: large proportions of initial adverbials did not exert discourse scope and some final adverbials did exert discourse scope. He concluded that “all adverbials at independent clause level have potential scope over a span broader than their host clause” (Crompton 2006: 252). If this conclusion is correct, the actual discourse function of adverbial positioning options remains obscure. This chapter describes some corpus-based research aimed at investigating two other textual variables which have been proposed as shedding light on this obscurity: 1. paragraph-internal positioning of clause-initial/clause-final adverbials 2. textual reference within the clause-initial/clause-final adverbials. The data analyzed was a subcorpus1 (100,000 words) of the British National Corpus (BNC), composed of newspaper editorial pages which contain editorial and opinion columns, letters to the editor, and humor columns.

2. Paragraphing and initial position Ho-Dac & Péry-Woodley (2008) report some research into initial temporal adverbials and discourse segmentation in expository French text which proposes that initial adverbials do play a role in discourse segmentation “but only in specific configurations” (67): these configurations involve the presence of a new paragraph or section. In terms of Goutsos’s (1996) model of discourse structure, adverbial positioning within the sentence is but one of a cluster of linguistic signals text-producers use to signal transition, as opposed to continuity. As a measure of continuity/discontinuity in discourse segmentation independent from orthographic paragraphing, Ho-Dac & Péry-Woodley used accessibility of referents within the main clause according to Ariel’s (1990) hierarchy: they took a high degree of accessibility in the 1

The subcorpus comprised files A1F, A1T, A27, A2J, A2W, A3A, A3T, A44, A4G, A4U, A56, and A5K of the British National Corpus (2007).

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Positioning of adverbials: Discourse function reconsidered

grammatical subjects of sentences as indicating continuity with preceding sentences and a low degree of accessibility as indicating discontinuity, i.e. discourse segmentation. Ho-Dac & PéryWoodley conclude from their findings that initial adverbials have “[discourse] structuring power”, i.e. the power to segment the discourse, only “if they coincide with a paragraph break” (2008: 72). It was decided to investigate whether this “cluster effect”, that is to say the co-occurrence of (1) an adverbial in sentence-initial position in a paragraph-initial sentence and (2) extended discourse scope could be observed in the BNC editorial corpus across a similar range of adverbials to those studied in Crompton (2006) and using the same methodology as Crompton (2006) for determining whether an adverbial exerts scope in the discourse beyond the sentence of which it forms a constituent. Only adverbials forming constituents of independent clauses are analyzed, because adverbials syntactically subordinated below the level of independent clause do not have scope over the whole independent clause and thus do not have the potential to apply to whole sentences or discourse spans. The analytical procedure consists of inspecting the subsequent context of adverbials with potential scope. The analytical test applied to each subsequent sentence, is “Can this sentence plausibly be interpreted as falling under the scope of the earlier adverbial?” As described earlier, Crompton (2006) found that in practice, such an act of interpretation is not dependent on intuition but the presence or absence of linguistic phenomena which serve to cancel scope: the operation of these cancellation mechanisms is illustrated in some example text segments given below. For the purposes of this research, an adverbial is considered to exert discourse scope if its scope remains uncanceled in the discourse for at least one sentence subsequent to that in which it appears. The set of adverbials considered in this research is broader than that of Ho-Dac & Péry-Woodley, both formally and semantically. Ho-Dac & Péry-Woodley do not specify the forms of the adverbials they considered but from the examples they give it would seem that they looked at only non-clausal adverbials. Semantically, they considered temporal adverbials only. The adverbials considered in this research are those shown in Figure 1. Form

Meaning Location (temporal & spatial)

Non-clausal

expressions containing during, ago, at, now, here,

Clausal

when clauses

Condition after,

if clauses

Figure 1. The range of adverbials analyzed

The concordancing software AntConc (Anthony 2007) was used to identify all tokens of the adverbials shown in Figure 1. Each token was analyzed manually to identify whether or not it was one of the target set of adverbials which potentially have discourse scope. The following examples from the BNC data are provided to illustrate (a) the range of adverbials considered and (b) the analytical basis for determining whether an adverbial exerts intersentential scope – a range of grammatical and semantic devices which are analyzed as canceling (Fries 1995) circumstances established in previous sentences. Segments (1) and (2) both begin with sentence-initial adverbial

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Positioning of adverbials: Discourse function reconsidered

phrases headed by during. (1) During the recent European Community elections the representatives of EC governments promoted the ideal of a border-free Europe by 1992. Now, it would appear from this article, that this ideal is shattered and a two-tiered Europe is on the cards. (A1F 185-186) (2) During the late Seventies and early Eighties, all, or almost all of these places went to the fortunate members of the left’s slate. Every so often, someone would buck the trend: in 1982 Mr Kinnock was dropped from the slate, but kept his place. Generally, however, the best way to become one of the seven constituency representatives on the executive was to win the approval of those who set the slate. It now looks as if membership of the slate is rapidly becoming a disadvantage. (A2W 72-75) In both these segments, cancellation is accomplished by the same mechanism, a new circumstance-changing adverbial (now) in a subsequent sentence. In (1), however, the potential intersentential scope of the during... adverbial is analyzed as being been canceled immediately whereas in (2) the during... adverbial is analyzed as exerting scope over the following three independent clauses until cancellation in the third sentence. Segments (3) and (4) both begin with sentences containing a sentence-final when-clause: (3) The Labour leader made formal obeisance to the language of socialism when he complained of the ‘neglect of the productive base’. But his theme - that Labour would concentrate on supply-side deficiencies of the British economy - was one which would naturally appeal to non-political parents and teachers and to business people seeking literate and numerate employees. (A27 201-202) (4) He was a final-year student there when he went down to the provincial town of Kecskemet to earn some pocket money by delivering lectures. The date was October 1956 and in Budapest anti-communist demonstrators and the Hungarian army were clashing with Soviet tanks. Mr Pozsgay did not rush back. By consequence of his inaction, he is the only leading communist of his generation today to be completely untainted by the 1956 uprising and its aftermath. (A3A 70-73) In (3) the scope of the adverbial clause beginning with when is analyzed as being canceled by But (functioning as a conjunctive adverb) in the immediately following sentence. In (4), however, the when-clause is analyzed as exerting scope over the subsequent two sentences until cancellation by the change of verb tense in the third sentence. Segments (5) and (6) both begin with sentence-initial if-clauses.

Crompton

Positioning of adverbials: Discourse function reconsidered

(5) If the Rushdie affair teaches us anything, it is that liberals and fundamentalists alike should inspect their principles in a spirit of critical self-examination. Certainly censorship should not be allowed to masquerade as virtuous compromise, but nor should commitment to free speech go unexamined. As Mr Torode points out, our liberal forefathers insisted on the importance of testing faiths by submitting them to discussion. (A2W 373-5) (6) If that class is sadly numerous today, it may be because of a common belief that ‘British poetry has chosen to turn inwards, parochial, self-comforting and serviceable’. It is Davie’s contention that this view is quite wrong: ... (A2J 12-13) In (5) the if-clause is analyzed as exerting scope over its host sentence and the subsequent sentence, while the change from present to past tense (is, should, should, should → insisted) in the verb phrase of the third sentence cancels the irrealis condition established by the if-clause. In (6), cancellation of the if-clause is accomplished immediately by encapsulation (Sinclair 1993) of the whole preceding sentence within the textually anaphoric expression this view. On the basis of such evidence, Crompton (2006) argued that all circumstances – those established by sentence-initial adverbials, like (1), (2), (5), and (6), and those established by non-initial adverbials, like (3) and (4) - survive in the discourse unless and until explicitly canceled. Table 1 presents the findings on discourse scope and sentence position for the adverbials listed in Figure 1 in both initial and non-initial position in sentences and paragraphs in the BNC data. Conforming with the findings of Crompton (2006), these results do not support the view that sentence-initial position per se is a predictor of extended discourse scope. A chi square analysis of the data in Table 1 shows there is not enough evidence (at the p