advcl: adverbial clause modifier
An adverbial clause modifier is a clause which modifies a verb or other predicate (adjective, etc.), as a modifier not as a core complement. This includes things such as a temporal clause, consequence, conditional clause, purpose clause, etc. The dependent must be clausal (or else it is an advmod) and the dependent is the main predicate of the clause.
The accident happened as night was falling
advcl(happened, falling)
If you know who did it, you should tell the teacher
advcl(tell, know)
He talked to him in order to secure the account
advcl(talked, secure)
He was upset when I talked to him
advcl(upset, talked)
They heard about you missing classes.
advcl(heard, missing)
With the kids in school , I have plenty of free time
advcl(have, school)
mark(school, With)
nsubj(school, kids)
case(school, in)
She entered the room while sad
advcl(entered, sad)
Modifying Nominal Predicates
An advcl never modifies a nominal as such (then it would be acl instead) but it can modify a clausal predicate
that is realized as a nominal, with or without copula. One has to distinguish whether the modifier clause modifies the
whole predication of the matrix clause, or just the entity denoted by the nominal. Hence we have advcl in
He is a teacher , although he no longer teaches .
advcl(teacher, teaches)
but acl:relcl in
He is a teacher whom the students really love .
acl:relcl(teacher, love)
Optional Depictives
This relation is also used for optional depictive adjectives, where the adjective is introduced in clause structure independently of the nominal it describes (contrast: acl if the adjective is an adnominal predicate). The depictive adjective is treated as an adverbial clause modifier of the higher clause. The adjective also provides a secondary predication, where the nominal predicand may or may not be overt; if it is overt, the secondary predication can be represented with an enhanced dependency. See xcomp for further discussion of resultatives and depictives.
She entered the room sad
advcl(entered, sad)
Sad describes the person entering the room, not the manner of entering—but is still taken to modify the verb. Note the similarity to the while sad example above. Omitting the nominal predicand she does not change the basic analysis:
Entering the room sad is not recommended
advcl(Entering, sad)
advcl in other languages: [bej] [bg] [bm] [cop] [cs] [de] [el] [en] [es] [et] [eu] [fi] [fr] [fro] [ga] [gn] [gsw] [gub] [hy] [it] [ja] [ka] [kk] [ky] [ml] [no] [pcm] [pt] [qpm] [ro] [ru] [sl] [ssp] [sv] [swl] [tpn] [tr] [u] [urj] [uz] [xcl] [yue] [zh]