Introduction

While the juxtaposition of space and time adjuncts in the previous chapter could be justified on the basis of semantic affinities between the two types, manner and contingency adjuncts are discussed in the same chapter for purely practical reasons. Manner and contingency adjuncts are the third and fourth most common types in the core corpus, as well as in Biber et al. (1999: 783ff). Both types were subdivided into a range of subcategories (see sections 2.4.3 and 2.4.4). It is thus of interest to see how these types of adjuncts are used in context. In the case of manner adjuncts, it is also relevant to discuss the extent to which the subcategories really express manner, as the manner adjuncts in the present framework are defined and categorised somewhat differently from the systems found in the reference grammars consulted.

Manner and contingency adjuncts do not have the same potential as space and time adjuncts for metaphorical extension, but some types, notably those denoting quality, cause and condition, have clear parallels in the interpersonal domain, as disjuncts.

Manner adjuncts

More on subtypes of manner adjuncts

Manner adjuncts are a highly diverse category, with as many as eight subtypes (see table 2.2). The most frequent by far is manner:quality; compared to this all the others are relatively rare, the second most frequent one – accompaniment – being almost five times less common.