Why is there a Present-Day English absolute?

Abstract

International audienceWhereas the Present-day English (PDE) absolute construction has traditionally been labelled an infrequent, archaic and formal Latinism (Quirk et al. 1985: 1120), some recent studies have contested this view by claiming that the construction is still more productive than often thought (Kortmann 1991:2, König & van der Auwera 1990: 349). In addition, researchers have pointed out that cross-linguistically, English makes significantly more use of this construction than other Germanic languages (Kortmann 1995: 189-192). The reasons for this perceived discrepancy, however, are still largely unknown. It is the purpose of this article to verify the claim that absolute constructions in English differ substantially in their productivity and frequency from those in other Germanic languages by conducting a diachronic corpus-based comparison between English and Dutch. As it turns out, our data analysis confirms the existence of such a substantial difference. Second, the article will try to pinpoint why exactly this difference exists and will extrapolate these findings to include other Germanic languages such as German, Danish, Norse and Swedish with the aid of the already existing literature on the subject. It is suggested that two language-internal mechanisms form the basis of the differing frequency of absolutes in both language groups. First, the abundant use of ing-forms in English (e.g. gerunds, free adjuncts, progressives) is argued to support the continued existence of present participle absolutes syntagmatically through the mechanism of structural priming: i.e. given x in the preceding context, y is triggered (Loebell & Bock 2003; cf. Section 5.2). Second, the English absolute is supported paradigmatically by virtue of its dual connection to the rest of the language system through two types of functional and formal overlap: one with the gerund, and one with the prepositional postmodifier. In the other Germanic languages, only the latter type of overlap is present, meaning that they have less network links available than has English to support the construction's continued use. An additional, but arguably less crucial, factor is that of language external prescriptivism. Prescriptivism in English grammar never opposed the use of the absolute construction as vehemently or as consistently as happened in other Germanic languages. 2. The absolute construction Cross-linguistically the absolute construction can be identified as a non-finite construction, which always consists of two core elements: a (pro-)nominal subject and a predicate (Bauer 2000: 261). The predicate is typically a present (1) or past participle (2) but other possible predicate types include perfective participles, noun phrases, adjectival phrases, adverbial phrases, prepositional phrases and infinitives (Kortmann 1995: 195)

Grammaticalization by changing co-text frequencies, or why [BE Ving] became the ‘progressive’

“…Other types of subordinate adverbial clauses seem to have increased as well. Killie & Swan (2009) provide evidence that adverbial - ing clauses over time have become less appositive and more subordinate, while van de Pol & Petré (2015) show that adverbial uses of absolutes – among other increasing uses – are much more frequent in English from the late Early Modern English period onwards than they are in Dutch, which is arguably more like the earlier stages of English in this respect.…”

Divide and conquer: the formation and functional dynamics of the Modern Englishing-clause network

“…From a diachronic perspective, Killie & Swan (2009) argue that FAs were initially restricted to expressing relations of elaboration and accompanying circumstance, but came to prefer strongly adverbial uses. ACs, on the other hand, appear to have undergone the opposite development from more strongly adverbial to less informative elaboration uses (van de Pol 2014). In light of Kortmann's claims regarding the relation between syntactic and semantic linkage, these findings suggest that as the network of adverbial ing- clauses formed, these clauses came to be organized according to the iconicity principle, with subjectless ing -clauses expressing more informative relations, and constructions with overt subject being preferred for less informative uses.…”

“…ACs, as shown in (17), were also steadily becoming more diverse, as they started taking objects and adverbial complements of their own much more often. In addition, they started being used in quasi-coordinate contexts (paraphrasable by an and -coordinated clause with finite verb form), as in example (18) (van de Pol 2014). As a result, the semantic features of the AC started to coincide with FAs.…”

“…FAs then spread to sentence-initial and medial position and acquired the ability to express more informative adverbial relations, like time and cause (Killie & Swan 2009) (19). Early Modern ACs, as in (20), likewise continued to expand their functional abilities by spreading further to the domain of quasi-coordinate relations (van de Pol 2014): So that I was fayne to flye to a lytle paryshe callyd Hemsted, thynkynge ther for to have had some reste (PPCEME, 1555) And rising from his seat, he went and led her into the bath; it being in vain for her to resist . (PPCEME, 1688) …”

English Absolute Clauses in Fiction: The Unaugmented Absolutes in Harry Potter

“…With respect to frequency, English absolute clauses are traditionally believed to be infrequent (Quirk et al, 1985(Quirk et al, , p. 1120, archaic, rather than stylistic (Higa, 2023), and should be avoided in writing (Sweet, 1903, p. 124). However, with the use of corpus-based quantitative approach and diachronic method, it was found that English absolute clauses are frequent in the genre of fiction and tend to be increasingly used in Present-Day English (He & Yang, 2015;Kim, 2020;van de Pol & Hoffmann, 2016;van de Pol & Petré, 2015). Despite the useful findings, the reasons for their appearances in a specific context such as fiction have not yet been explored.…”