Martin Haspelmath & Ekkehard König (eds.), Converbs in cross-linguistic perspective. Structure and meaning of adverbial verb forms – adverbial participles, gerunds (Empirical Approaches to Language Typology; 13)
In English, existence is usually indicated by the structure there + to be. There is actually an adverb of place, but the introductory there has no adverbial sense. It is merely used to introduce the sentence.
Argument and Rhetoric. Adverbial Connectors in the History of English
the bookis the first corpus-based study giving a comprehensive overview of English items which have been used as adverbial connectors ('conjuncts', 'linking adverbials'), from Old English to Present-Day English. The author analyses different characteristics of the make-up, functions and use of connectives, and considers morphological and syntactic factors as well as pragmatic, textlinguistic and socio-cultural aspects.
This reference book offers a systematic and comprehensive treatment of prepositions and adverbial particles and is at the same time, by means of the inclusion of examples of usage throughout the book, a practical guide to the subject. Brief explanations accompany the examples where necessary. The key words in the phrases dealt with are arranged in alphabetical order and the book is divided into six chapters (thus achieving some classification of the complex question of usage): 1, Common Prepositions; 2, Prepositional Phrases; 3, Nouns preceded by Prepositions; 4, Phrasal Verbs; 5, Verbs followed by Prepositions; 6, Words (other than Verbs) followed by Prepositions.
This book deals with the interpretation of adverbially quantified sentences containing definite DPs and Free Relatives (FR) Thereby, it concentrates on the origins of Quantificational Variability Effects (QVEs), i.e. readings according to which the respective quantificational adverb seems to quantify over the individuals denoted by the respective DP/FR. QVEs are usually discussed only in connection with singular indefinites and bare plurals. This book therefore provides the first comprehensive account of QVEs with definite DPs and Free Relatives (while also discussing singular indefinites and bare plurals). Presenting new empirical observations and arguments for the assumption that Q-adverbs quantify over situations exclusively, it is also an important contribution to the theoretical debate concerning the quantificational domain of Q-adverbs.. Â It is of interest to linguists working in formal semantics and the syntax-semantics interface as well as to philosophers of language who are interested in adverbial quantification and situation semantics. Furthermore, it offers an introduction to the core issues of situation semantics and adverbial quantification and is therefore accessible to graduate students interested in these topics.
