The Estimable Disjunct

Sir: Frankly, I fail to understand Alan N. Cowan’s objections to what he oddly terms the “dislocated adverb” (Letters, April 2019). Grammarians—and most English speakers—would be similarly puzzled.

In his three example sentences, the words hopefully, regretfully and thankfully do not modify the verb—the grammatical function that defines an adverb. Instead, he uses these words (correctly) as what grammarians call “disjuncts”. Essentially, these look like adverbs and, incidentally, can be used to modify a verb. Alternatively, used at or near the start, and occasionally the end, of a sentence, they may function as disjuncts. This large class of words includes predictably, fortunately, personally, confidentially, admittedly, presumably, apparently and many more. Importantly, they can apply to one or several elements in a clause, or the whole clause (some American textbooks call them “sentence adverbs”). Obviously, in the sentence “Thankfully, Mary willingly signed the letter yesterday”, the speaker’s emphasis would convey whether he or she is “thankful” that Mary (not John) signed it, or that Mary signed it (having previously refused to), or that she signed it yesterday (rather than waiting till tomorrow), or simply that Mary did what she did. The only adverbs here are willingly and yesterday.

Quirk and Greenbaum’s A Grammar of Contemporary English (amongst others) lists the various functions of disjuncts. For example “attitudinal disjuncts” (such as understandably, surprisingly, remarkably) convey the speaker’s attitude to the content of the sentence; other disjuncts perform other functions. I too have several pet dislikes regarding the ABC’s language use, but, seriously, they don’t include disjuncts (basically Mr Cowan’s “dislocated adverbs”). Hopefully, we’ll continue using them for their rich, expressive potential. Personally, I certainly intend to!

Leigh Mackay
Annandale, NSW

Policy Consequences

Sir: In his review of ACTU Secretary Sally McManus’s book, Steven Kates (April 2019) highlights her ignorance of economics and business. One quote from the book states: “If you’re a private company, you’ve got one overriding obligation … to make a profit … You do this by increasing your productivity, expanding your market, raising prices … and by reducing the wages and conditions of the people who work for you.”

Ms McManus should have mentioned that employers have two further and far more drastic options: one is to sack workers and reduce the overall labour cost of their business; and the other is to close the business, liquidate its assets and live off the proceeds of the invested money. Neither option assists the employees whom Ms McManus is working for but, if unions or governments make life too difficult or insufficiently profitable for private business, they are real-world options which must be accepted as potential consequences of bad policy.

Bernie Masters
via email