Disjuncts

A disjunct is a type of an adverbial adjunct which expresses information that is not considered essential to the sentence it appears in, but which is considered to be the speaker’s or writer’s own attitude towards, or the descriptive statement of, the propositional content of the sentence. A disjunct does not fit into the flow of the sentence and is often separated by a comma or a set of commas. A disjunct normally acts as an evaluation of the rest of the sentence. Although it usually modifies the verb, we could say that it modifies the entire clause, too.

The name ‘disjunct’ would seem to suggest that these have some kind of connection with (con)junctive items, but that their role is, if anything, to signal an absence of conjunction. The distinction between conjuncts (however, in addition, etc.) and disjuncts is now well established and corresponds to a broader distinction, based on the propositional view of cohesion outlined above, between text-structuring and writer’s comment, which are seen as largely unrelated. Their approach emphasizes that the scope of disjuncts is simply the sentence in which they appear (‘contributing another facet of information to a single integrated unit’) while conjuncts function between clauses or other elements (‘conjoining independent units’).

Halliday (1985/1994) prefers the terms Conjunctive Adjuncts and Modal Adjuncts; (Halliday, 1994:84) but the line of division is essentially the same. The pervasiveness of the distinction is reflected in, for example, materials for teaching English as a Foreign Language, where conjuncts are frequently taught as a separate topic as part of writing and reading skills, under headings such as ‘Signpost words’, whereas disjuncts appear with other adverbs as part of speaking skills. The difference in terminology exists in various grammars so English, thus Quirk, R. et al. in A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language, refer to these adverbials as disjuncts.(Quirk et al, 1985,:43) On the other hand, in Longman Grammar of Spoken and Written English, Biber calls them stance adverbials and provides his own classification. (Biber et al, 1999:354). Here, we shall consider disjuncts and stance adverbials to be synonymous, and emphasise the difference in terminology when necessary.

Disjuncts and adjuncts

What is the difference between disjuncts on one hand and adjuncts and subjuncts on the other? Consider the adverbials in the following sentences:

1. Sadly, you have failed the exam
2. Mary is, in all frankness, acting very strangely.
3. Since he made that mistake, he couldn’t be a part of the team.

We note, first of all, that it is not the form of these adverbials that makes them different from adjuncts or even from subjuncts:

1. The student stared sadly at the professor.
2. The witness talked in all frankness about the night of the crime.
3. He couldn’t be a part of the team since he made that mistake.