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In many examples of modern grammar, the five key components of clause structure are defined as subjects, objects, verbs, complements, and adjuncts. My question is simple: do subjuncts, disjuncts (sentence adverbials), and conjuncts (conjunctive adverbials) fall under the categorisation of adjunct?

I have been trying to develop my understanding of these so that I can comfortably identify them when I see them (subjuncts are the most difficult for me); however, I want to know whether I am wasting my time. I am not trying to become a linguist—I just want to improve the quality of my writing.

For example, should I simply call a disjunct a supplementary adjunct when I see one? I know that it's grammatical, and I can identify its function (conveying the viewpoint of the writer). It would seem that I may have reached the point of diminishing returns.

In the answers to this question, I am looking for a functional breakdown of these categories, not the words themselves. I want to identify whether 'adjunct' is a catch-all term.

MJ Ada
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  • What research have you done? junct is the base term, the others are prefixes. – Lambie Feb 26 '22 at 20:00
  • The Latin verb is iungo, iungere, iunxi, iunctus 'join' (also a cognate). There's lots of ways of joining. There's even one called "Chomsky-adjunction". – John Lawler Feb 26 '22 at 20:32
  • @Lambie I have research all these types of 'juncts' and have observed other responses on this forum in which users have referred to disjuncts and subjuncts as adjuncts, even after them being called by their specific names. There seems to be a lot of overlap. – MJ Ada Feb 26 '22 at 20:36
  • Can you give examples of each of these and links to your definitions? That would help a lot. – Mitch Feb 26 '22 at 21:25
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    Adverbials: adjuncts, disjuncts, subjuncts and conjuncts It's all there. https://www.eltconcourse.com/training/inservice/lexicogrammar/adverbials.html – Lambie Feb 26 '22 at 21:33
  • This is one link I found quite useful (it separates adjuncts into a separate category): https://is.muni.cz/el/ped/podzim2018/AJ2BP_SSYA/um/mat/Lesson_8/Lesson_8_Grammatical_functions_of_adverbials.pdf – MJ Ada Feb 27 '22 at 15:11
  • @Lambie I have seen this resource before, but thank you :) – MJ Ada Feb 27 '22 at 15:12
  • Well, it gives you a full picture, doesn't it? – Lambie Feb 27 '22 at 15:58
  • It does. I understood the resource when I read it. My confusion came about after reading some replies on this forum in relation to other questions. BillJ, who has helped me understand a lot, called them all adjuncts. – MJ Ada Feb 27 '22 at 16:36
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    @MJAda user BillJ's nomenclature is found in the Cambridge Grammar of the English Language (Huddleston & Pullum). – LPH Feb 27 '22 at 17:02
  • Yeah, there's a whole junkyard there. – Hot Licks Mar 28 '22 at 22:29
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    @LPH It should be noted that H&P have an unfortunate tendency to redefine existing terms to mean something entirely different (e.g. "preposition"). This can make it difficult to translate back and forth between idiosyncratic CGELisms and the ordinary terminology of traditional grammar. So you have two choices: accept H&P's analysis but try to turn it back into something recognizable, or try to persuade everyone to adopt H&P's terminology. – alphabet Mar 24 '23 at 00:26
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    (In general I prefer the former approach, BillJ the latter, but I don't think that there's a "right" answer here.) – alphabet Mar 24 '23 at 00:36
  • @alphabet The reading of your message shows me that there would be no alternative but to accept H&P's analysis unconditionally; that I can't do: I must have a logical basis for what I believe, and any contradiction keeps me from integrating in my working knowledge the material wanting in that respect; there is also another consideration as pertain to taste (nomenclature for the most), but I am more tolerant in that domain. It happens that I have had vent of the fact that there are in H&P's treatment several disagreements with the grammar I use (Quirk et al.); moreover, I have the (1/2) – LPH Mar 24 '23 at 01:57
  • @alphabet conviction that some of these diverging treatments do not amount to a progress (nomenclature, compound words, for instance), so I actually remain faithful to Quirk's treatment wholesale as I couldn't adhere to points of view in H&P that are contrary to a logic that H&P apparently cannot invalidate. This is to me all the more necessary as I am not at leisure to investigate H&P's grammar to any serious extent. If some EL&U authority should require that a change be made over to H&P, I would then restrict my answers to simpler questions. (2/2) – LPH Mar 24 '23 at 01:57
  • @LPH Sorry, I should have said "you have two choices if you want to follow CGEL." Of course, you don't have to follow CGEL, and there are good arguments for not doing so. Certainly one should not accept their arguments uncritically, and it's not as if CoGEL has somehow become "obsolete" just because someone else also decided to write a grammar. – alphabet Mar 24 '23 at 02:19
  • @alphabet I see; as to what appears to be the general stance occasioned by the publishing of this new grammar, it is quite reassuring. – LPH Mar 24 '23 at 10:52
  • @LPH It makes little sense to treat CGEL as gospel, given that linguistics is a large field containing a wide variety of perspectives; it would be foolish to insist that people rely solely on any single book, whether it's CGEL, or CoGEL, or McCawley, or what have you. For instance: there are a number of tradeoffs between, say, treating -'s as a clitic or as forming a genitive case, and one can reasonably disagree with CGEL's adoption of the latter approach. – alphabet Mar 24 '23 at 12:10

2 Answers2

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From the asker's comments:

My confusion came about after reading some replies on this forum in relation to other questions. BillJ, who has helped me understand a lot, called them all adjuncts.

BillJ's terminology comes from Huddleston & Pullum's The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language. The answer is, ultimately, that H&P don't use the terms subjunct, disjunct, and conjunct, so those terms can't easily be compared with the ones that BillJ uses.

One can debate the extent to which learning these fine-grained syntactic distinctions will improve the quality of one's writing, if your interest is purely in writing rather than linguistics.

Reminder: every minute you spend debating whether Huddleston & Pullum's analyses are preferable to others is a minute you could spend watching old episodes of "The Red Green Show." It's a classic show, it's free on YouTube, and you don't have to get into any long arguments about patterns of complementation or fused-head constructions.

alphabet
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  • The question is valid on ELU, which is aimed at linguists / enquirers at an advanced level. The advice in the last two paragraphs here would be sound elsewhere. // It is unfortunate and confusing that some people give pet treatments / terminologies as if they're indisputable, not even attributing to the relevant school, especially when some terms are used with stipulative definitions (conflicting with other terminologies). – Edwin Ashworth Jul 23 '23 at 13:23
  • @EdwinAshworth Indeed. But the asker said that they wanted to improve their writing, not to become a linguist. – alphabet Jul 23 '23 at 13:25
  • But answers are aimed at a wider audience. Frame challenges are quite in order. – Edwin Ashworth Jul 23 '23 at 13:36
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Your grammatical categories are perhaps not correct in the last element of the list you mention. I am not aware of any one speaking of adjuncts in the domain of English grammar as a category on the level of subject, objects, verb and complement. However, the grammar I have been following proposes the following categories as descriptive of what can be found in clause structure: SUBJECT, VERB, COMPLEMENT, and ADVERBIAL.

(CoGEL § 2.13) The form-function distinction is particularly important in the case of clause structure, […]. To describe the constituency of clauses, we need to distinguish the following elements of clause structure: SUBJECT (S), VERB (V), OBJECT (0), COMPLEMENT (C), and ADVERBIAL (A).

Now, the category named "ADVERBIAL" is a category further divided into 4 essential categories : ADJUNCTS, DISJUNCTS, SUBJUNCTS , and CONJUNCTS. The following diagram shows the subcategories; annotations in pencil provide further information to be found in chapter 8 of CoGEL, The semantics and grammar of adverbials; I didn't erase them because I think they are faithful duplications of indications found in chapter 8, or perhaps elsewhere in the book (nevertheless, they are to be acknowledged with a critical eye on the count of their being annotations I made myself).

enter image description here

My advice to you is first to begin with a serious grammar (for example CoGEL), and then from there go on with your investigations so as to determine the terminology that suits you best; I think, however, that the terminology in CoGEL is widely accepted. Secondly, if you seek confortable identification, stick to a good grammar and absorb thouroughly its content while keeping an eye open for the alternative viewpoint. (Finally, I must say that if you ever achieve this enviable goal of confortable identification, you will have to be something of a linguist.)

LPH
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  • Thanks for this. Would you say that I should just read one complete resource and follow its definitions, then? I have a book called 'Oxford Modern English Grammar', which I have been waiting to dive into. – MJ Ada Feb 27 '22 at 15:17
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    @MJAda Yes, more or less, although you don't have to know whatever source you choose thouroughly before deciding to change for another one. You shouldn't look for information somewhere else as long as almost all of what you read makes sense to you. If you happen to start thinking differently, then with your newly gained overall view you can get to another book and evaluate better its alternative approach. It seems difficult, in my opinion, to start studying a new subject by continuously checking several references. This is never done in schools; they ask you to use only one textbook. – LPH Feb 27 '22 at 16:48
  • I've found Aarts to present the thinking behind approaches to grammar – the exploration of the underlying principles necessarily involved (eg lumping vs splitting; ranking of constituency tests) and essentially the assumptions that must be made in choosing approaches – more openly than some other authors of more famous grammars. 'Ours is the best way; this is English grammar.) – Edwin Ashworth Feb 27 '22 at 16:48
  • @LPH That explains why I'm constantly confused :) I'll try to avoid consulting this forum too often, as I often receive conflicting information and terminology from people who have different perspectives. This was less evident when I first started to learn the basics, but there's too much contradiction as I ask more complicated questions. – MJ Ada Feb 27 '22 at 17:02
  • "I am not aware of any one speaking of adjuncts in the domain of English grammar as a category on the level of subject, objects, verb and complement" <--- You simply haven't been reading very much! Try the Internet Grammar of English at UCL, or A Student's Introduction to English Grammar by Huddleston & Pullum, or English Syntax and Argumentation by Bas Aarts. Look inside Aarts's book there at section 2.4! – Araucaria - Him Feb 28 '22 at 12:08
  • @Araucaria-Nothereanymore. That is right, I have neither read those works nor tried to find out their new approach; however, I think that their departure from the traditional and neat terminology according to which "adverbial" stands as the hyperonimic term is not such a good idea, not a mark of progress. – LPH Feb 28 '22 at 12:21
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    @LPH Anything that makes a modifier sounds like an adverb or gives people the idea that it has an adverby kind of function is actively damaging to people's understanding of grammar! The term adjunct is not new. Best part of 100 years old! See here for why adverbial is a naff term! – Araucaria - Him Feb 28 '22 at 12:39
  • @Araucaria-Nothereanymore. I agree with your answer, but to a limited extent : the blurring that results from the existence of the adjective "adverbial" makes the noun "adverbial" not such a happy term. However, fundamentally, the idea of the syntactic function "adverbial" being one, roughly speaking, of adding a modality, it is well embodied in this term since the adverb is a word that supplies such an element : it modifies, adds a mode (very slow walk, moved very slowly). (1/2) – LPH Feb 28 '22 at 14:18
  • @Araucaria-Nothereanymore. There is an even worse case of apparent mingling of ideas in the fact that the only syntactic function correspponding to the part of speech "verb" is again named "verb"; yet, this is not a fact that would seem to be the cause of much discussion. (2/2) – LPH Feb 28 '22 at 14:19
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    @LPH "There is an even worse case of apparent mingling of ideas in the fact that the only syntactic function correspponding to the part of speech "verb" is again named "verb" That's a very good point, but actually, the term you'll find in modern grammars such as the Aarts that I linked to or CaGEL or ASIEG, for that function is Predicator. See 2.2 in English Syntax & Argumentation that I linked to in comments above :-) Great minds, as they say. – Araucaria - Him Feb 28 '22 at 14:58
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    @Araucaria-Nothereanymore. I have to agree fully with that innovation. – LPH Feb 28 '22 at 15:04