Realizations of the Circumstantial Adjunct:
summary
Circumstantial adjuncts are realized by a wide variety of units:
1. She called me yesterday. Adverb
2. She called me too late. AdvG
3. She called me from the office. PP
4. She called me this morning. NG
5. She called me while I was out. Finite clause
6. She called to tell me the news. Non-fin. to-inf.cl
7. She called me, using her mobile. Non-fin.-ing cl.
8. She called me, scared out of her wits. Non-fin.-en cl.
9. Afraid to leave the house, she called me. Verbless clause
While non-finite -ing, -en and verbless clauses undoubtedly give background information, syntactically it is more problematic to analyze them as adjuncts. They are more loosely integrated into the clause and can’t be made the focus of a cleft (*It was scared out of her wits that she called me) as can other circumstantials, including to infinitive clauses (It was to tell me the news that she called me).
Units that are set off from the main clause by a comma or a pause are called supplementives. The -ing and -en types, as well as verbless clauses such as afraid to leave the house fall into this category. Semantically, they may be understood as reduced clauses of means or reason with an adjunctive function. Here, Afraid to leave the house not only lacks a main verb and a subject but is related to the predicate. (She was afraid to leave the house.) Such ‘detached predicatives’ are used in written genres, where they economically add information, typically in initial position as part of Theme.
