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Adverbial Clauses

Chapter · March 2015

DOI: 10.1016/B978-0-08-097086-8.52029-7

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Lin, Jingxia. 2015. Adverbial Clauses. In: James D. Wright (editor-in-chief),

International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences, 2nd edition, Vol 1. Oxford:
Elsevier. pp. 185–188.

International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences, Second Edition, 2015

Adverbial Clauses
Jingxia Lin, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore 2015

This article is a revision of the previous edition article by B. Kortmann, volume 1, pp. 162–167,
2001, Elsevier Ltd.

Abstract
Adverbial clauses are known from traditional grammar as one of three major classes of
subordinate clauses. They are semantically diverse and structurally complex. In addition
to modifying main clauses, adverbial clauses can also contribute to discourse cohesion. In
light of recent cross-linguistic research, this article discusses adverbial clauses with
regard to their structure and distribution, meanings, functions in discourse, and structural
properties influencing their interpretation.

Key words
adverbial clause; adverbial subordinator; cohesion; discourse; main clause; ordering;
pragmatic function; semantic relation; speech act; typology

Adverbial clauses are known from traditional grammar as one of three major classes of
subordinate clauses (the other two being relative and complement clauses). Their major
function is that of an adverbial, i.e. they provide information on the (temporal, locative,
causal, conditional, etc.) circumstances under which the events depicted in the main
clauses take place. Correspondingly, the adverbial clauses in (1) are called temporal,
locative, causal, and conditional clauses, respectively.

(1) They will meet ...

(a) before the sun rises.
(b) where they first made love to each other.
(c) because they need to find a solution.
(d) if we let them.

Given the large spectrum of possible circumstances, adverbial clauses represent the most
semantically diverse class of subordinate clauses as well as the most challenging class for
interpretation. Also given their subject-predicate structure, adverbial clauses are formally
the most complex type of adverbials compared with adverbs (e.g., soon, here, quickly)
and adverb phrases (e.g., on Sunday, in the garden, very quickly). Combining with a
sentence frame like ‘They will meet ...’ in (1), adverbial clauses yield a complex
sentence, whereas adverbs and adverbial phrases still yield a simple(x) sentence. Beyond
the complex sentence of which they form a part, adverbial clauses have a crucial function
in the creation of a coherent discourse and are thus a prominent feature of texts. It seems
that adverbial clauses can be found in all languages of the world even though they are not
marked in the same way (Thompson and Longacre, 1985). In light of recent cross-
linguistic research, this article discusses adverbial clauses with regard to their structure
and distribution (Sect. 1), meanings (Sect. 2), functions in discourse (Sect. 3), and
structural properties influencing their interpretation (Sect. 4).

1. The Structure and Distribution of Adverbial Clauses

1.1 The Structure of Adverbial Clauses
Adverbial clauses are subordinate clauses in the sense that their occurrence usually
depends on the main clause. However, not all languages mark the distinction between
dependent and independent clauses in the same way. Here are the devices that are
commonly found among languages: (i) adverbial subordinators, either in the form of
separate words such as before and where in English (1) or verbal suffixes as in Kiowa (a
language in central United States) (2); (ii) special verb forms such as infinitives and
participles as in English and Latin (3); (iii) special word order as in German where
independent clauses usually uses verb-second word order whereas subordinate clauses
uasually use verb-final word order (4) (Dryer, 2011; Thompson et al., 2007).

(2) à-dę̀·k’ɔ́·-àl hɔ́n àn à-dę̀·hę́·m-ô

1SG-lie-although NEG HAB 1SG-sleep-NEG
‘Although I lie down, I can’t fall asleep.’ (Dryer, 2011 from Watkins, 1984: 242)
(3) Inflating her lungs, Fiona screamed.
(4) Wir wohn-ten auf dem Lande,wie ich dir schon gesagt habe
we live-PAST on ART(DAT) land as I you already told have(SG)
‘We lived in the country, as I have already told you.’ (Thompson et al., 2007: 239)

Adverbial clauses may also be expressed in verbless form, as the English example in (5).
Such clauses typically do not specify in which way (temporally, causally, conditionally,
etc.) they modify the state of affairs described in the main clause, and thus are much more
challenging for interpretation than most prototypical adverbial clauses.

(5) Alone in his room, she switched on the light.

Subordinators in the form of separate words (such as that and if in English) are the most
commonly way to mark adverbial clauses (Dryer, 2011). Yet the presence of a
subordinator does not guarantee that the relevant subordinate clause can be classified as
an adverbial clause, or a relative or complement clause. As illustrated in (6), the word
that is used as an adverbial subordinator in (6a), but a complementizer in (6b) and a
relativizer in (6c):
(6) (a) He talked so fast that most people couldn’t follow.
(b) He said that most people couldn’t follow.
(c) The talk that most people couldn’t follow was given by a colleague of mine.

The sentences in (6) show that even in individual languages there may exist no formal
differences between the three major types of subordinate clause. Rather, we need to refer
to their function to determine the type: an adverbial clause is a modifier of the main
clause and thus optional; a relative clause is a modifier of a noun (phrase) and thus
optional; a complement clause is the core argument of a predicate and thus not omissible
(Diessel, 2001).
Even though, a clear-cut classification may still be impossible or depend on one’s
point of view. The subordinate clauses in example (7) are sometimes called adverbial
relative clauses since they “can be paraphrased with a relative clause with a generic and
relatively semantically empty head noun” (Thompson et al., 2007: 245); in other words,
when, where, and as in (7) can be analyzed as relative adverbs rather than adverbial
subordinators, and replaced by at the time, at the place, and in the way respectively. As a
matter of fact, it is not difficult to find languages where in particular adverbial clauses of
Time, Place, and Manner resemble and share properties with relative clauses (Kortmann,
1997; Diessel, 2001; Thompson et al., 2007).

(7) (a) She’ll leave when John comes.

(b) I forgot the bag where we met last time.
(c) He wrote as his teacher taught him.

1.2 The Distribution of Adverbial Coordinators

Adverbial subordinators, by which adverbial clauses are morphologically marked, have
two major forms: separate words and verbal suffixes. According to the investigation of
660 languages by Dryer (2011), adverbial subordinators in the form of separate words
have three possible positions in a clause, at the beginning as in English, at the end as in
Kombai (a Trans-New Guinea language in Indonesia), or inside the clause (e.g., between
the subject and the verb) as in Nkore-Kiga (a Bantu language in Uganda); adverbial
subordinators in the form of verbal suffixes are mostly found in verb-final languages, so
the suffixes are also at the end of the clause (in such cases, the adverbial clause usually
precedes the main clause, so that the suffix subordinator is not sentence-final (see Sect.
1.3).
The number of languages whose adverbial clauses are marked by separate words is
much larger than those by verbal suffixes; among the former, the number of languages
with clause-initial adverbial subordinators is about four times larger than those with
clause-final and clause-internal subordinators (Dryer, 2011). There are also languages
with more than one type of subordinators and none of them is the dominant; for instance,
the adverbial subordinators in Epena Pedee, a Choco language in Colombia, are found
both in words (in clause-final position) and verbal suffixes (Dryer, 2011). However, no
language is found yet where its adverbial clauses are marked by verbal prefix.

1.3 The Ordering of Adverbial Clauses and Main Clauses

Adverbial clauses either precede or follow the main clauses, and are referred respectively
as preposed (or initial) and postposed (or final) adverbial clauses. Studies found that
preposed adverbial clauses tend to occur in strong OV languages, so that the sentence
ends with the main clause; VO languages and a small number of OV languages are found
with both pre- and postposed adverbial clauses (Diessel, 2001, 2013). The ordering of the
adverbial and main clauses also correlates with the position of the adverbial subordinators
described in Sect. 1.2: languages with both pre- and postposed adverbial clauses tend to
have clause-initial subordinators, whereas languages with preposed adverbial clauses
only tend to have clause-final subordinators (Diessel, 2001; Thompson et al., 2007). For
the former type, studies show that the ordering of the adverbial clauses varies according
to their semantic relations with the main clauses: conditional clauses tend to be preposed,
temporal clauses exhibit a mixed tendency of both pre- and postposing, whereas causal
and purposive clauses are often found to follow the main clause (Diessel, 2001, 2008,
2013; Diessel and Hetterle, 2011; Schmidtke-Bode, 2009). Pre- and postposed adverbial
clauses also tend to have different pragmatic functions in discourse (see details in Sect.
3).
The relations of pre- and postposed adverbial clauses to the main clauses are not the
same either. For example in interrogative questions, the information carried in a
postposed adverbial clause is usually included in the question, but that in a preposed one
is usually not (Diessel, 2013). As illustrated in (8), the postposed adverbial clause while
she was still in her office in (a) can be understood as the focus of the question, that is,
whether this is the time when “you” talked to “her,” but the preposed clause in (b) is not
necessarily an “integral semantic component” of the main clause (Diessel, 2013: 348).

(8) a. Did you talk to her while she was still in her office?
b. While she was still in her office, did you talk to her? (Diessel, 2013: 348)

In terms of intonation, postposed adverbial clauses are found relatively more separated
from the main clause, i.e. an intonation break may be found in between the two clauses
(also see Sect. 4 for exceptions); on the contrary, preposed adverbial clauses are usually
intonationally bound to the main clause (cf. Ford, 1993).

2. Semantic Types of Adverbial Clause

Traditionally, adverbial clauses are classified according to the semantic relations of the
events depicted in different parts of a complex sentence or different chunks of discourse.
The exact number and labeling of these semantic relations vary. All languages are
reported to use the adverbial clauses (or a subset of the relations) listed in (9) (cf.
Kortman, 1997; Givón, 1990; Thompson et al., 2007); other relations found in all
European languages include Instrument/Means ‘by,’ Degree/Extent ‘insofar as,’
Exception/Restriction ‘except/only that,’ (Negative) Concomitance ‘with(out)’
(Kortmann, 1997).

(9) Time (Simultaneity Overlap/Duration/Co-Extensiveness ‘when/while/as long as,’

Anteriority ‘after,’ Immediate Anteriority ‘as soon as,’ Terminus ‘since,’ Posteriority
‘before,’ Terminus ‘until,’ Contingency ‘whenever’);
Place ‘where’;
 Manner ‘as, how’;
Cause/Reason ‘because’;
Purpose (Purpose ‘in order that,’ Negative Purpose ‘lest’);
Result ‘so that’;
Condition (Condition ‘if,’ Negative Condition ‘unless,’ Concessive Condition ‘even
if’);
Concession ‘although’;
Contrast ‘whereas’;
Addition ‘in addition to’;
Substitution ‘instead of, rather than’;
Similarity ‘as, like’

One would assume that not all of these semantic relations are equally central to
human cognition. Indeed there is evidence suggesting roughly a dozen cognitively most
central relations, including Simultaneity (Overlap ‘when,’ Duration ‘while’), Place
(‘where’), Similarity (‘as’), Cause, Condition, and Concession (Kortmann, 1997). For
example, the latter three relations are found in all the European languages that mainly use
finite adverbial clauses and these three also have the largest number of adverbial
subordinators in the European languages. Moreover, the adverbial subordinators marking
the core relations tend to be more reduced morphologically, much more frequently used,
and older than those marking the peripheral relations (Kortmann, 1997).
Simultaneity and Cause also figure prominently in a large-scale semantic analysis of
nonfinite adverbial clauses. In addition, nonfinite adverbial clauses are frequently
interpreted in the sense of Addition/Concomitance (‘and at the same time’), as in (10),
and Exemplification/Specification (‘e.g., i.e., in that, more exactly’), as in (11).

(10) (a) There he sat, wearing a white golfing cap.

(b) Sam threw himself to the ground, dragging Frodo with him.
(11) (a) Shares in Midland were worst hit, falling at one time 42p.
(b) He paid the closest attention to everything Lenny said, nodding, congratulating,
making all the right expressions for him.

Therefore, not all semantic relations are equally important in different structural types of
adverbial clauses. Likewise, their relative importance as coherence relations depends on
the type of discourse. For instance, Cause, Condition, and Concession play a much more
important role in academic writing than they do in narrative fiction, where temporal
relations as well as, for nonfinite adverbial clauses, Addition/Concomitance and
Exemplification/Specification account for a much higher number of adverbial clauses
(see Kortmann (1991) for statistics and a discussion of relevant literature).

3. Functions of Adverbial Clauses in Discourse

Typically adverbial clauses provide background information for what is depicted in the
main clause. But they serve additional functions beyond sentence level, contributing
cohesion by linking sentences, paragraphs, or even the whole discourse. In interactive
communication, adverbial clauses can also modify the speech act of the speaker, rather
than the main clause.
3.1 The Functions of Adverbial Clauses Beyond Sentence
Adverbial clauses help create coherent discourse (Chafe, 1984; Thompson, 1985; Givón,
1990; Ford, 1993; Couper-Kuhlen and Kortmann, 2000; Thompson et al., 2007; Diessel,
2013). Depending on whether they precede or follow their main clause, adverbial clauses
produce more global (or textual) coherence or more local coherence, respectively.
Preposed adverbial clauses serve a kind of guidepost or scene-setting function for the
reader or listener by (i) linking back to what has gone in the (not necessarily
immediately) preceding sentence, paragraph, or discourse, and (ii) preparing the
background for what is going to follow in the complex sentence, and often even a whole
chunk of discourse. By contrast, postposed adverbial clauses typically have a much more
local function, i.e., their scope is restricted to their immediately preceding main clause.
They neither reach back into earlier parts of the discourse, nor fore-shadow or prepare for
what is going to follow. For example in written English, the preposed purpose clauses
usually contain issues from preceding discourse, whereas the postposed ones often
describe purposes of the main clauses (Thompson, 1985). Accordingly, the subject of a
postposed adverbial clause typically is identical with the main clause subject, whereas the
subject of a preposed adverbial clause is often identical with that of (one of) the
preceding sentence(s).

3.2 Speech Act Adverbial Clauses

In addition to the adverbial clauses that link main clauses, sentences, or paragraphs as
introduced above, some adverbial clauses function at the level of interactive
communication by modifying the speech act of the speaker, and are called “speech act”
adverbial clauses (cf. Rutherford, 1970; Kac, 1972; Sweetser, 1990; Thompson et al.,
2007; Diessel, 2013). Two examples are given in (12). Instead of setting a condition for
the event in the main clause, the if clause in (12a) expresses the speaker’s attitude that he
or she may not be in a position for making the statement in the main clause; similarly, the
because clause in (12b) does not state the reason for Harry to be late, but the reason why
the speaker states that Harry will be late, i.e. the speaker talked to Harry’s wife, through
which he or she knows that Harry will be late (Diessel, 2013; Thompson et al., 2007).

(12) a. And if I may say so Mr Speaker . . . they possibly derived some benefit from the
presence of the Chancellor . . . . [International Corpus of English] (Diessel, 2013: 345)
b. Harry will be late, because I just talked to his wife. (Thompson et al., 2007: 267)

4. The Interpretation of Adverbial Clauses

Problems of interpreting adverbial clauses not only arise for the inherently vague
nonfinite adverbial clauses, but also for some finite adverbial clauses. World knowledge
or contextually grounded knowledge is important for the interpretation, but formal (i.e.,
morphological, syntactic, and prosodic) features may also crucially influence the process
of interpretation. For example, polysemy is observed for almost one third of the adverbial
subordinators in the European languages, especially for those with a high text frequency
(Kortmann, 1997). This section introduces some of the most important relevant features
that may influence the interpretation, always provided that the given language allows for
a choice (e.g., has no constraints such as the obligatory use of the subjunctive mood in
subordinate clauses, or subordinate clauses generally preceding their main clause) (for
further discussion see Kortmann (1991) and König (1995)):

i. choice of tense and/or mood in the adverbial clause and, accordingly, in the main
clause. For example, many languages use different tense (and mood) for the three
semantic types of conditional: present tense (indicative mood) in factual/real
conditional clauses (13a), past tense (or subjunctive mood in some languages) in
hypothetical conditional clauses (13b), and past perfect (or a conditional perfect)
in counterfactual clauses (13c).

(13) (a) If she comes home, I will be very happy.

(b) If she came home, I would be very happy.
(c) If she had come home, I would have been very happy.

Tense constraints also hold for the two different meanings (temporal and causal) of
English since. Since can have a temporal reading in two situations; being used with past
tense is one of them (see the other in (16)). Mood is also adopted in many (e.g.,
Romance) languages to help differentiate Result (‘so that’) and Purpose (‘in order to
that’) that share the same adverbial subordinators: indicative mood leads to a Result
reading, subjunctive mood to a Purpose reading.

ii. non-subordinate word order. As introduced in Sect. 1, German usually uses verb-
second word order for independent clauses, and verb-final word order for
dependent clauses. However, the verb-second word order is also typical in spoken
German for postposed weil-causals and obwohl-concessives clauses. An example
is given in (14).

(14) Ich hab das mal in meinem ersten Buch aufgeschrieben. Weil dann glauben’s die
Leute ja. (‘I’ve written that down in my first book. Because people believe it then.’)

iii. Intonation. One relevant intonational feature is the presence or absence of an

intonation break: only when the complex sentence in (15) is read as a single
intonation group does the adverbial clause receive a concessive conditional
reading (‘even if’).

(15) /I wouldn’t marry you if you were the last man on earth./ (Kortmann, 1997: 92 from
Haiman, 1986)

iv. The choice of verb forms. The dependent vs. independent verb forms was shown
to be relevant in (i) already (indicative vs. subjunctive mood). (16) illustrates the
impact of the choice between finite and nonfinite form in the adverbial clause on
the interpretation of an adverbial subordinator, here since: when introducing a free
adjunct, since can only receive a temporal reading; a causal one is impossible (cf.
since in (i)).

(16) Since working with the new company, Frank hasn’t called on us even once.
 v. Constituent order, more exactly the relative order of adverbial and main clauses
(cf. Kortmann, 1991; König, 1995; Diessel, 2001, 2005, 2008). In English, for
example, the great majority of present-participial free adjuncts receive a
temporally sequential interpretation relative to the main clause (Kortmann, 1991).
That is, the order of events is presented iconically by the relative order of
adverbial and main clauses, as illustrated by the minimal pair in (17).

(17) (a) She uncurled her legs, reaching for her shoes.
(b) Reaching for her shoes, she uncurled her legs.

Cross references
Conversation Analysis: Sociological; Grammar: Functional Approaches; Grammatical
Relations; Linguistic Typology; Semantics; Iconicity; Relative Clause

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