The Absolute Phrase in Contemporary English

Abstract

Until recently it has been difficult to obtain good information about the relative freąuency of the absolute phrase in spoken and written English. With a POS-tagged corpus like the ICE-GB, however, it is possible to use extraction formulas to find absolute phrases in the ICE-GB, a million-word corpus of contemporary English. In this study, I describe the re- sults of that corpus work, especially in terms of relative distribution by genre.

Keywords

• absolute phrase
• absolute clause
• nominative absolute
• fixed absolutes
• stereotyped absolutes
• extraction formulas
• tagged corpus
• sentence fragments
• syntax
• relative frequency in spoken and written english
• ice-gb
• pos-tagged corpus