English absolute clauses in context of fiction: the study of unaugmented and augmented absolute clauses in Harry Potter and The Philosopher's Stone and Harry Potter and The Chamber of Secrets

Abstract

This study investigates the reasons for the different frequencies of unaugmented and the augmented absolutes. It also presents in-depth analyses on their syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic aspects in the context of fiction. The data were collected from Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone and Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, the first two books of the bestselling Harry Potter series. The findings of the study reveal that syntax, semantics, and pragmatics play an interrelated role in determining the way the absolute clauses appear in fiction. Syntactically, the structure of both unaugmented and augmented absolute clauses, with the majority of THEME subjects in one-place predicates, follows the Economy Principle by producing a concise, clear, and informative structure. Semantically, the unaugmented absolutes, with no introductory augmentor, have coreferences as a cohesive device to be semantically bound with their matrix clause of which the majority of subjects are part-whole coreference. With respect to semantic relations, weak adverbials are of the greatest majority in the data, while strong adverbials, the minority. The high productivity of weak adverbials in fiction is highly expected due to their ease of processing which could keep the attention and interest of the readers (Write Clearly and Concisely, n.d.). Strong adverbials, which are difficult to process for the target audience, meanwhile, are less preferred, and therefore infrequently appear in fiction. The semantic relations are also in relation to the frequency of the two types of absolute clauses. That is, unaugmented absolutes are prone to occur as weak adverbials, which are believed to keep readers’ attention in the context of fiction due to the ease of processing; they are thereby highly frequent in the data. Augmented absolutes, in contrast, tend to accommodate strong adverbials, which are more difficult to interpret and are not preferred in fiction; the augmented absolutes are therefore less frequent in the data. The coreferential property of absolutes also correlates with semantic relations; these correlations are in five patterns: PC and accompanying circumstance; NC and simultaneity; FC and elaboration; CC as implied coreference; and NC and strong adverbials. These correlations provide an in-depth understanding of how coreferences and semantic relations are related in the context of fiction. Regarding positions, both types of absolute clauses extensively appear in the final position, following the information structure of topic-comment, rather than the End-Weight Principle. The study concludes that the interplay of syntax, semantics, and pragmatics contributes to the production of absolute clauses which are economical but informative to keep readers’ attention in fiction.