Interpretations of Agents in Temporal Adverbial Clauses Used in Academic Writing: Sociolinguistic Implications
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Abstract
This current study examined the sociolinguistic implications of variants and agents in temporal adverbial clauses in academic prose. While previous studies focused more the temporal adverbial clauses in semi-formal texts, such as novels and news, this research paper sheds light on the study of temporal adverbial clauses in academic prose in order to support English as a Foreign Language learners’ (EFL) academic writing. The method in this study was purposive sampling. The data were 30 applied linguistics research articles including 234 items of temporal adverbial clauses. The analysis of grammatical variants was conducted following Aarts (2020). The framework for temporal adverbial clauses includes finite, non-finite and verbless clauses. The interpretation of agents in temporal adverbial clauses is based on Kearns’ (2011) semantic principle of compositionality. Results revealed patterns in the use of temporal adverbial clauses, showing that non-finite temporal adverbial clauses were the most frequent variant, accounting for 64.10% of the data. The anonymous agents in these clauses can be interpreted as teacher–learner pairs and researcher–participant pairs. The findings of this study can be explained by the no-null-subject parameter (Radford, 2023). The omitted subject in the temporal adverbial clauses is co-referential with a subject in the adjacent context. Finally, the sociolinguistic implications of temporal adverbial clauses in applied linguistics research articles reflect underlying dimensions of gender, power, and social distance embedded in these structures.
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