This text presents a corpus-based syntactic, semantic and pragmatic analysis of free adjuncts and absolutes in present-day English. The major function of these constructions is to serve as adverbial clauses, most frequently without any overt specification of which semantic relation (time, cause or condition) they express in a given complex sentence. The main focus of the book is on central problems of their use and interpretation. These include the range of their semantic indeterminacy, the factors that help resolve it, and, for free adjuncts, the identification of their underlying subject...