Absolute Clauses in English from the Systemic Functional Perspective

This book focuses on the structural diversity, semantic variability, case choice, stylistic characteristics and diachronic distribution of English absolute clauses. The syntactic roles assumed by absolute clauses in the traditional sense can be categorized into clausal adjuncts, attendant circumstances and appositives. These three types of function correspond to the three hypotactic expansions in the relation system of clause complexes in Systemic Functional Linguistics, i.e., elaboration, extension and enhancement. This research, therefore, redefines absolute clauses in the framework of SFL and proposes four syntactic types of absolute clauses: absolute paratactic clauses (elaboration), absolute hypotactic clauses (extension and enhancement), absolute projected clauses (fact and act) and absolute embedded clauses (subject). Based on the Brown family corpora, BNC and COHA, this research finds that different function types of absolute clauses differ in terms of their stylistic and diachronic distributions, and both nominative and accusative cases are acceptable.

The first attempt to study absolute clauses in the theoretical framework of SFL The results, based on corpus data, are self-contained and highly persuasive Includes a detailed quantitative analysis, helping readers to better understand absolute clauses Includes supplementary material: sn.pub/extras

Inhalt
Introduction.- Absolute Clauses in the Literature .- Approaching Absolute Clauses from the SFL Perspective.- Research Design.- Relationships Realized by Absolute Clauses.- Absolute Clauses Distributed in Three Corpora.- Discussions.- Conclusion.