The positioning of concessive adverbial clauses in English: assessing the importance of discourse-pragmatic and processing-based constraints

Abstract

Link to this article: http://journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S1360674312000305How to cite this article: DANIEL WIECHMANN and ELMA KERZ (2013). The positioning of concessive adverbial clauses in English: assessing the importance of discourse-pragmatic and processing-based constraints.English permits adverbial subordinate clauses to be placed either before or after their associated main clause. Previous research has shown that the positioning is conditioned by various factors from the domains of semantics, discourse pragmatics and language processing. With the exception of Diessel (2008), these factors have never been investigated in concert, which makes it difficult to understand their relative importance. Diessel's study, however, discusses only temporal constructions and identifies iconicity of sequence as the strongest predictor of clause position. Since this explanation is, in principle, unavailable for other types of subordinate clauses, the generalizability of Diessel's findings is somewhat limited. The present study offers a multifactorial analysis of 2,000 concessive constructions from the written part of the BNC and assesses the variable importance of six factors for the ordering choice, showing that semantic and discoursepragmatic factors are much stronger predictors of clause position than processing-based, weight-related ones. On a methodological note, the study proposes that random forests using conditional inference trees constitute the preferred tool for the general type of problem investigated here.

The sequencing of adverbial clauses of time in academic English: Random forest modelling

“…Clauses headed by different subordinators display slight differences in meaning. Thus, any subordinator selected for adverbial clauses is deemed as a predictor of the positioning of these clauses (Wiechmann and Kerz 2013). For example, IF and UNLESS are the most common subordinators for adverbial clauses; however, IF is the most versatile conditional subordinator, According to Quirk et al (1985), WHEN, AFTER, and BEFORE are the most frequent temporal subordinators in academic English, which will be the focus of this study.…”

“…The current study, like Wiechmann and Kerz (2013), only focuses on one discourse-pragmatic factor: bridging. It refers to a context in which an initial adverbial clause acts like a bridge between the previous and the upcoming discourse.…”

“…To put it differently, the semantic difference observed among different types of adverbial clauses (such as adverbial clauses of time, condition, concession, etc.) cause them to occupy different positions within a complex sentence (Quirk et al 1985;Biber et al 1999;Diessel 2005Diessel , 2008Wiechmann and Kerz 2013). For example, Diessel (2001) showed that conditional clauses usually precede their associated matrix clauses, causal clauses are usually sentence-final, and there is a roughly even distribution between initial and final temporal adverbial clauses.…”

“…Diessel (2001) also revealed that adverbial clauses of reason and purpose are predominantly placed in the final slot. Moreover, concessive clauses show a slight preference for the final position (Biber et al 1999;Diessel 2001;Wiechmann and Kerz 2013). Clauses headed by different subordinators display slight differences in meaning.…”

“…It may be expected that pre-posed adverbial clauses are structurally less complex. Following Diessel (2008) and Wiechmann and Kerz (2013), in this study we consider only those dependent clauses as complex that contain at least another dependent clause of any kind. We should bear in mind that linguistic complexity and the length of adverbial clause are closely tied to each other.…”