| Another conjunction of elements in a sentence involves multiple adverbial or adjectival words or phrases that serve to modify parts of the sentence. |
Adverbial accumulation.The conjunction of elements adverbial words or phrases in a sentence is normally asyndetic. These adverbials are not at the same level of grammatical structure and the order of the paraphrase is important. Each adverbial builds on the last, hence, the term adverbial accumulation. |
| (1) | John rode his bike rapidly down the street from home to school every morning for a week last May. | |||
| a. | John rode his bike rapidly. | AA (Manner) | ||
| b. | John did this down the street. | PP (Direction) | ||
| c. | John did this from home. | PP (Origin) | ||
| d. | John did this to school. | PP (Goal) | ||
| e. | John did this every morning. | AA (Frequency) | ||
| f. | John did this for a week. | AA (Duration) | ||
| g. | John did this last May. | AA (Temporal position) | ||
| (2) | About two weeks ago I looked down from the Mariposa trail into the tremendous fissure of the Sierras. —Kimball. | |||
| a. | I looked down. | P (Direction) | ||
| b. | I did this from the Mariposa trail. | PP (Origin) | ||
| c. | I did this into the tremendous fissure of the Sierras. | PP (Goal) | ||
| d. | I did this about two weeks (long) ago. | AA(Temporal position) | ||
| In the following there is 1) a qualification conjunction, 2) an accumulation of adverb phrases of the same sort (as an appositive), and 3) a reference of many that is to the men and the women taken together (associative conjunction): |
| (3) | How many men and women perform their daily tasks from the highest motives alone — for the glory of God and the relief of man's estate? — C. W. Eliot. | |||
| aa. | How many men together with women perform their daily tasks from the highest motives alone. | CMP (Purpose) | ||
| aba. | How many men together with women perform their daily tasks for the glory of God? | |||
| abb. | (Moreover) how many men together with women perform their daily tasks for the relief of man’s estate? | qConj (CMP); CMP (Purpose) | ||
| ba. | How many women together with men perform their daily tasks from the highest motives alone. | |||
| bba. | How many women together with men perform their daily tasks for the glory of God? | |||
| bbb. | (Moreover) how many women together with men perform their daily tasks for the relief of man’s estate? | qConj (CMP), CMP (Purpose); wConj (NP) | ||
Variation in position.Especially when the adverbs are of the same kind they may accumulate one or more to the front of the sentence and the other(s) to the end. In the following the verb lay is a linking verb, like the copula, with the following adjective phrase complementing the subject. |
| (1) | Outside her kennel, the mastiff old | |||
| Lay fast asleep, in moonshine cold. | —Coleridge. | |||
| a. | The mastiff old lay fast asleep. | |||
| b. | Outside her kennel the mastiff old did this. | AA (Locative) | ||
| c. | The mastiff old did this in moonshine cold. | AA (Locative) | ||
| This may also happen when the adverbs differ in rank. Temporal adverbs seem to prefer the initial position. |
| (2) | Centuries before this the Chinese had printed books by means of carved wooden blocks.— Kimball. | |||
| a. | The Chinese printed books by means of carved wooden blocks. | AA (Manner) | ||
| b. | The Chinese had done this centuries before this. | AA (Previous) | ||
| Locative phrases seem quite prone to accumulate. Such phrases are rather the same as a descriptive (non-restrictive) adjective clause reduced to an appositive. |
| (3) | On the wall opposite, about a mile across the gulf, a brook was pouring itself to the valley. —King. | |||
| a. | A brook was pouring itself to the valley. | CMP (Direction) | ||
| b. | About a mile (far) across the gulf a brook was doing this. | AA (Locative) | ||
| c. | On the wall opposite a brook was doing this. | AA (Locative) | ||
| (3') | On the wall opposite, which was about a mile across the gulf, a brook was pouring itself to the valley. | |||
| m. | On the wall opposite a brook was pouring itself to the valley. | |||
| i. | This wall was about a mile (far) across the gulf. | nAdjC | ||
Transformation for adverb accumulation.In order to express the transformation for adverb accumulation we need to establish a ranking on the various features on sentence adverbs. We saw in the first sentence above a ranking of the following features: manner, locative, frequency, duration, temporal. The orders of all possible adverb features would map to a scalar value on the feature of [nRank]. |
Diagraming adverb accumulation.There is a diagram for adverb accumulation in figure 5. The fact that there is a natural order imposed by the semantic features suggests that the predicate phrase under which the compounding takes place be described by a generative rule. The phenomenon of conjunction is in fact accepted as a sound principle by the proponents of X-bar theory. Such a framework allows any (major) constituent (X) to occur recursively in its PS-rule where it has the Kleene star (“bar”) to provide the multiple instances for conjoining. |
| Figure 6 illustrates the form of rule that will account for the ordering that occurs with adverbial accumulation. |
| This sort of rule is actually not restricted to just the four types of adverbial phrases shown in the rule of figure 6. All of the classes that participate in being ordered would require subcategorization to capture that order. The ones I have been able to identify are listed in figure 7 with examples of each. |
Accumulation with partly.As quite the semantic opposite of the associative conjunction (conjoining with the adverb phrase, together with) there is an asyndetic accumulation using the (manner) adverb partly or phrase in part: |
| (1) | The causes of this change lie partly in the altered character of the whole world’s civilization, partly in the increasing poverty of the city. —Howells. | |||
| a. | The causes of this change lie partly in the altered character of the whole world’s civilization. | |||
| b. | The causes of this change lie partly in the increasing poverty of the city. | AdvA | ||
| Only the presence of and between these two predicates would change the analysis to a qualitative conjunction of adverbial phrases — qConj (AVP). |
