Thursday, July 8, 2021

Types of Disjuncts

Unlike adjuncts, disjuncts do no modify structures within the sentence. They are often placed at the beginning of the sentence. Four types of disjuncts are attitude, epistemic, point of view and style.

Attitude disjuncts express an attitude towards the proposition contained in the sentence. In the utterance Luckily, he passed his exam the proposition is he passed his exam and luckily is a comment expressed by the speaker.

Style disjuncts indicate the mode in which the sentence is uttered. For example, the speaker can be honest, open, serious, etc. In the sentence Seriously, don't tell anyone, seriously is a style disjunct.

Point of view disjuncts offer a particular perspective. The sentence Politically, the event was a great success, the adverb politically indicates that from the point of view of politics, the event was very successful.

Epistemic disjuncts communicate the speaker's assessment of the probability that a proposition is true. They are usually sentence initial. An example of a sentence with an epistemic disjunct is Perhaps tomorrow will be rainy.

Disjuncts are an important part of language. Style disjuncts do not modify the sentence at all and indicate the manner in which the speaker utters the sentence. Other disjuncts include attitude, epistemic and point of view.


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