The Adjunct

Abstract

The adjunct is that part of the sentence which does not act as subject or complement or predicate. It may be omitted without making the sentence ungrammatical. Theoretically there may be any number of adjuncts in a sentence; they may consist of any number of words; and they may take any one of several different forms: connective, subordinate clause, parenthesis or a word or phrase answering the questions ‘where?’, ‘when?’, ‘how?’ or ‘why?’ of the verb. The purpose of this chapter is to examine the use of adjuncts by Meredith in The Egoist and Conrad in Nostromo. These books have been chosen because both are generally agreed to represent the peak of each author’s artistic achievement, and comparison of their adjuncts alone offers a limited yet flexible means of contrasting the two texts.