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In a contract document I'm reading, I found the following sentence:

Notwithstanding the foregoing, your employment is also subject to the following terms:

My question concerns the phrase, "notwithstanding the foregoing." I understanding the meaning, but if you were going to construct a sentence diagram, what part of speech would this phrase have?

My initial reaction was to call it a nominative absolute, but it doesn't seem to fit the usual test (ie, try to subordinate by adding a conjunction + verb of being).

Ryan
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    It's a pragmatic parenthetical (ie it stands syntactically separate from the matrix sentence). It is replaceable by the pragmatic marker subclass mitigation (and traditionally called a comment clause, and a sentence adverb / adverbial) nonetheless. – Edwin Ashworth Jan 18 '16 at 15:17
  • @EdwinAshworth In trad grammar, notwithstanding is a preposition. In modern grammar it is too! In one sense it's very different from nonetheless, because nonetheless cannot take a Complement. This is kind of important even from a trad grammar point of view. – Araucaria - Him Jan 19 '16 at 23:00
  • @Araucaria The question refers to the phrase 'notwithstanding the foregoing', as does my comment-answer. – Edwin Ashworth Jan 20 '16 at 00:19
  • @EdwinAshworth Indeed. Like many other preposition phrases, it's an Adjunct. In trad grammar, it's an "adverbial". And notwithstanding is a preposition. – Araucaria - Him Jan 20 '16 at 00:22
  • But OP asks about the parenthetical. I consider it to be so similar to 'nevertheless' here that it's of little use further analysing it, considering it best considered a multi-word lexeme. I've posted quite a few times about the unhelpfulness of the term 'sentence adverbial'. – Edwin Ashworth Jan 20 '16 at 00:28
  • @EdwinAshworth But either in trad grammar, Quirk et al grammar, Aarts grammar or in Jespersen / GaGEL grammar the word notwithstanding is a preposition. All prepositions can head a so-called "adverbial phrase", without exception. It's one of their defining characteristics. More importantly, nevertheless cannot take a Complement. Adverbs almost never take Complements, but prepositions most often do, especially noun phrases. – Araucaria - Him Jan 20 '16 at 01:14
  • @Araucaria OP writes 'My question concerns the phrase, "notwithstanding the foregoing" '. It's not a traditional part of speech (having 3 orthographic words). But it does the same job here as 'nevertheless', just as 'ship of the desert' is swappable with 'camel'. I have a list of these sentence-modifying single lexemes (containing one or more orthographic words) filed together under 'pragmatic markers'. – Edwin Ashworth Jan 21 '16 at 14:56
  • @EdwinAshworth Fair enough, but here this preposition is even taking a noun phrase Complement and heading a phrase occurring in Adjunct function - which is just what we'd expect a preposition to do. So that would make notwithstanding the forgoing a preposition phrase in Adjunct function (or Adverbial function if you prefer the term). There doesn't seem to be anything odd about it grammatically ... (shrugs) – Araucaria - Him Jan 21 '16 at 15:05
  • @Araucaria In classical grammar, 'What part of speech is the phrase “Notwithstanding the foregoing?” ' is not a sensible question. Only where multi-word idioms / other fixed expressions are treated as single lexemes is it proper. – Edwin Ashworth Jan 21 '16 at 15:10
  • @EdwinAshworth Yes, I completely agree. In modern grammar too. What part of speech is the phrase ... doesn't make sense. – Araucaria - Him Jan 21 '16 at 15:11
  • @Araucaria Thus 'Notwithstanding is a preposition ...' doesn't answer the question as it stands. But once / if one accepts that 'ship of the desert' is an idiomatic compound noun = 'camel', 'notwithstanding the foregoing' = 'nevertheless' may be classed as a pragmatic marker subclasses (1) [semantics] mitigation (2) [structuring] sentence-connector. – Edwin Ashworth Jan 21 '16 at 15:21
  • @EdwinAshworth But in contrast notwithstanding the forgoing means what it says and isn't figurative or metaphorical. It can also occur with other noun phrases instead of the forgoing such as the above, for example. We can also move around its constituent parts: the foregoing notwithstanding. So I'm not sure it's the same kind of fossilized unit that it might at first appear to e, imo. – Araucaria - Him Jan 21 '16 at 15:26
  • It's certainly a pragmatic marker, (1) marking a concessive and (2) marking / recalling related material in former sentence/s. 'As a result of the 1987 Act', for example, does not fulfil these roles. I wouldn't argue that it's not a PP, but am arguing that it may well be better treated as a single lexeme. Rathony gives an answer to the question 'What is the grammatical function of the phrase “Notwithstanding the foregoing” ? – Edwin Ashworth Jan 21 '16 at 15:42

2 Answers2

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Notwithstanding is a preposition that means in spite of and the noun foregoing is an object of the preposition. Therefore, "Notwithstanding the foregoing" in the sentence is just a prepositional phrase that modifies the sentence.

I think the confusion came from the fact that the preposition notwithstanding is in the form of a present participle (-ing) and the comma placed after the noun foregoing.

The comma is necessary to separate a rather long prepositional phrase from the sentence that follows it.

As you mentioned, there is no verb in the phrase and adding a conjunction doesn't work. Therefore, it is not a nominative absolute or participial construction.

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Your first inclination is correct: it is a nominative absolute. The acid test of adding "because of" before it shows this.

Richelle Wilson
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