English Language & Usage Asked on April 17, 2021
Usually, infinitives with ‘to’ are used to indicate adverbials of purpose.
e.g.
Can we use present participles as adverbials of purpose, as shown in the following sentence:
She telephoned saying that she was not coming this evening.
Is ‘saying’ an adverb of purpose, or an accompanying circumstance(attendant circumstance)? In other words, the action described with ‘saying’ is happening at the same time or to be on the safe side, roughly at the same time as the action ‘telephone’ .
Same confusion with the following example sentences regarding whether the present participles indicate purpose or just accompanying circumstances:
Tom has gone meeting his girlfriend.
He wrote a letter inviting me to his party.
I’m grateful for your help!
When words are deleted, there is always the risk of losing some of the meaning conveyed by variants containing more words. Participial clauses are a well-known example where this is often true.
In a related thread, I included
as an adjunct showing 'Purpose [/ reason (involving a logical course of action taken)]'.
This ('avoiding' = 'in order to') is the default reading; the anteriority (merely happening prior to) and causal (showing cause and effect but no intention) readings should according to Gricean maxims (the submaxim here being 'use language the way most people will understand it to be meant') be forced (eg
The 'purpose' usage is listed by Kortmann at a related thread.
..............
Your example,
would certainly be taken as containing a participial clause showing purpose: it seems the whole point of the phone call.
Answered by Edwin Ashworth on April 17, 2021
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