Disjuncts

Abstract

Focusing on a number of “logical” disjuncts in English, this paper argues that syntactic and semantic divisions in previous analyses have been drawn at the wrong point; while adjuncts (such as adjunct because) express real-world causal (or causal-type) relationships, disjuncts (such as since) express reasoning processes. Distinctions between content and style disjuncts in Quirk et al. (1985) and between content, epistemic and speech-act connectors in Sweetser (1990) are analysed (Sections 1–3 ff.). In the light of Sweetser, imbalances in syntactic distribution, foregrounding potential, and question-formation patterns in Quirk et al.'s content disjunct and style disjunct categories are identified; and Quirk et al.'s claimed identical sense of adjunct since and content disjunct because is contrasted with the fact of their syntactic difference (Sections 4 ff.). An alternative to Quirk et al.'s disjunct analysis into properly syntactic cognitive disjuncts and parenthetical comment disjuncts is proposed and justified (Sections 5 ff.). Possible objections to this are considered, with a focus on intonational issues (Sections 6 ff.). The notions canonical sense and canonical sub-sense are considered, particularly with respect to the disjuncts since and though (Section 7). Direct syntactic evidence for the proposed re-analysis is considered (Section 8), and areas where further work is required are identified (Section 9).