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In:Adverbs and Particles at the Form-Meaning Interface
Edited by Marco Coniglio, Kalle Müller and Markus Steinbach
[Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today 292] 2026
► pp. 352–382

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On different types of adverbial clauses appearing outside of their hosts

Published online: 23 March 2026
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https://doi.org/10.1075/la.292.16fre
Abstract
Several types of adverbial clauses can occur external to a German independent clause. The article argues that between such externally occurring adverbial clauses (ExtAdvCls) a basic distinction has to be made between those ExtAdvCls that refer to the world and contribute to the propositional meaning (W-ExtAdvCls) and those that refer to the discourse situation (D-ExtAdvCls).
W-ExtAdvCls and D-ExtAdvCls differ in terms of distribution, scope, ability to accommodate root phenomena and illocutionary force. To account for these differences, it is argued that W-ExtAdvCls are handled by regular sentence grammar and D-ExtAdvCls by a discourse grammar module that adopts a central aspect of Thetical Grammar, a part of Discourse Grammar (Heine et al. 2013). Thetical grammar provides for a cognitive-communicative operation whereby pieces of clausal syntax are transferred to the grammar of discourse.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Different types of externally appearing adverbial clauses
  • 3.A typology of dependent non-argument clauses
  • 4.A fundamental distinction between ExtAdvCls and its consequences
  • 5.On the external syntax of W-ExtAdvCls and D-ExtAdvCls
  • 6.On alleged counterexamples to the claim that ExtAdvCls cannot occur clause-internally
  • 7.Summary
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
References (43)
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