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.
1.1 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:
4. The student stared sadly at the professor.
5. The witness talked in all frankness about the night of the crime.
6. He couldn’t be a part of the team since he made that mistake.
It is not the position of the adverbials in 1, 2. and 3 either. If we moved the adverbials sadly, in all frankness and since to the end of the sentences in 4, 5. And 6 and we would leave their grammatical relations mostly unchanged and still extremely different from the grammatical relations of the adverbials in 1, 2. And 3. The adverbials in 4, 5 and 6 can be made the focus of a cleft sentence. They can also be the basis of contrast in alternative interrogation or negation; can be focused by focusing subjuncts; and can come within the scope of predication pro-forms or ellipsis and all this because of their adjunct status:
Did the student stare at the professor sadly or…?
It is in all frankness that the witness talked about the night of the crime.
However, the adverbials in the first three examples cannot undergo any of these transformations, as it would sound absurd, or require certain different interpretation:
*Did you fail the exam sadly or . . .?
*It is in all frankness that Mary is acting very strangely. . .
*It is since he made that mistake that he couldn’t be a part of the team.
(the last example could be correct only if since is perceived as a time adjunct)
When it comes to adverbials, there is a three-fold distinction that can presented informally in the following manner: adjuncts have a sentence role which is almost perfectly balanced to other sentence elements such as subject and object. Subjuncts in general have a lesser role than the other sentence elements; they are for example less independent both semantically and grammatically and in some respects are subordinate to one or other of the sentence elements. Disjuncts by the same analogy, have a superior role in comparison to the other sentence elements; they are syntactically more detached and in some respects even 'superordinate'. Their meaning seems to extend over the sentence as a whole. We shall now examine the most important semantic roles of disjuncts in order to understand why they appear to have such a grammatical function in relation to the clauses in which they appear.
It is extremely difficult to make a completely objective utterance, and practically everything we say or write conveys the impress of our attitude. Thus, a sentence such as:
1. Susan is cheating on her husband.
restricts assumptions about the 'authority 'on which the statement is made. It is highly unlikely that the speaker has actually heard Susan say, “I cheat on my husband”, but if this were the source of authority, the speaker would probably formulate the sentence such as:
2. Susan says that she is cheating on her husband.
This might well imply that the speaker cannot himself confirm it:
3. Susan says that she is cheating on her husband (even though I've seen no evidence of this).
If, he indeed, he such evidence, the sentence would be likely to be different again, both terms of the statement of the authority and the implication of the speaker's personal view :
4. Susan admits that she is cheating on her husband (just as I myself have suspected).
1.