[Lingtyp] Temporal clauses as modifiers and non-modifiers

[Jesus Francisco Olguin Martinez]

Dear all,



I hope this message finds you doing well.



As you know, adverbial clauses may be modifiers in that they modify the
propositional meaning of an element of the main clause. In this scenario,
adverbial clauses restrict a situation to a specific setting (time, place
and manner) or specific contingent circumstances (condition, cause,
purpose, result, etc.) (Schmidtke-Bode & Diessel to appear: 3). Note that
adverbial clauses may also be non-modifiers in which case they provide the
speaker’s attitude towards the propositional content expressed in the main
clause, as in (1a), or relate to the speech act expressed by the main
clause, as in (1b) (Crevels 2000; Tsunoda 2012: 383; Hampe 2015: 298; Hampe
& Gries 2018: 120; Tsunoda 2018; Schmidtke-Bode & Diessel to appear: 4).



(1)       a.         *if I am honest*, *I would not do it again*.

           b.         *After leaving the house, should we close the door*?



It has been noted that languages may use different clause-linking devices
depending on whether the adverbial clause is a modifier or non-modifier
(Crevels 2000: 317; Tsunoda 2012: 383). In the languages of my sample,
there are languages that have more than one primary strategy to express
‘when’, ‘after’, ‘before’, ‘until’, ‘while’.  It seems that one factor may
lead speakers to choose one type of temporal clause-linking device over the
other one is concerned with whether the temporal clause is a modifier or
non-modifier.



I was wondering if you are aware of any languages that show this.



Your help will be greatly appreciated!



Thank you very much in advance.
-- 
Jesús Olguín Martínez
Ph.D. Candidate, Dept. of Linguistics
*University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB)*
http://www.linguistics.ucsb.edu/people/jesús-olguín-martínez

*References*

Crevels, Mily. 2000. Concessives on different semantic levels: A
typological perspective. In Elizabeth Couper-Kuhlen & Bernd Kortmann
(eds.), *Cause – Condition – Contrast – Concession: Cognitive and discourse
perspectives*, 313-339. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter.

Hampe, Beate. 2015. Syntax from and for discourse: Adverbial clauses as
item-specific construction in spontaneous spoken English. In Thomas Herbst
& Susen Faulhaber (eds.), *Constructions: Aspects of Construction Grammar.
Special issue of Zeitschrift für Anglistik und Amerikanistik* 63: 295-322.

Hampe, Beate & Stefan Th. Gries. 2018. Syntax from and for discourse II:
More on complex-sentences as meso-constructions. In Beate Hampe & Susanne
Flach (eds.), *Yearbook of the German Cognitive Linguistics Association
(Special Issue: Corpora, Constructions. Cognition)*, 115-142. Berlin-Boston:
De Gruyter Mouton.

Schmidtke-Bode, Karsten & Diessel Holger. The typology of non-argument
clauses. To appear. In Manfred Krifka & Mathias Schenner (eds.), *The
Oxford Handbook of Embedding*. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Tsunoda, Mie. 2012. Five-level classification of clause linkage in
Japanese. *Studies in Language *36 (2): 382 - 429

Tsunoda, Tasaku (ed.) 2018. *Levels in clause linkage: A cross-linguistic
survey*. Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter Mouton.
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