EXPLORING ADJECTIVAL FREE ADJUNCTS: A CROSS-LINGUISTIC STUDY OF ENGLISH AND SERBIAN

Abstract

The paper examines adjectival free adjuncts in English and Serbian using a double and bidirectional corpus consisting of novels and their translations in both languages. The objectives of this study are to describe the formal and semantic characteristics of adjectival free adjuncts and to compare these constructions in the two languages based on their translational equivalents. The analysis of adjectival free adjuncts in English and Serbian demonstrates that they can be considered formally and semantically equivalent constructions, as evidenced by nearly 85% of cases showing absolute alignment in translation. In the remaining cases, adjuncts are conveyed through other phrases and clauses. In the translation from English to Serbian, translators resort to non-finite and relative clauses when the adjective is accompanied by a longer complement in English. On the other hand, when rendered into Serbian, adjuncts may change position or be translated as full adverbial clauses with an explicit conjunction to avoid ambiguity. In a number of instances, the comma is omitted in translation, indicating the close relation between adjectival free adjuncts and depictive secondary predicates.