Grammar and written discourse: Initial vs. final purpose clauses in English

TLDR: The authors show that the problem is not one of a single construction potentially occupying two different positions, but rather one of two quite different constructions, an initial purpose clause and a final purpose clause, which share the same morphology, but behave in radically different ways in the organization of the discourse.

Abstract: Purpose clauses, like most adverbial clauses in English, can occur either before or after the main clause with which they are associated. To the researcher interested in the relationship between discourse and grammer, an obvious research question to which this alternation gives rise might be: given two positions, initial and final, for a purpose clause in written English, what are the discourse factors determining which position it will take? Such aformulation assumes that the problem can be thought of in terms of a 'choice' between these two positions. However, closer examination reveals that the problem, rather than beingone ofasingle 'construction* potentially occupying two different positions, is actually much more appropriately viewed äs one of two quite different constructions, an initial purpose clause and a final purpose clause, which share the same morphology, but behave in radically different ways in the organization of the discourse: the initial purpose clause functions to state a 'problem' within the context of expectations raised by the preceding discourse, to which the following material (often many clauses) provides a solution, while the final purpose clause plays the much more local role of stating the purpose for which the action named in the immediately preceding clause is performed.