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This page pertains to UD version 2.

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.

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

but acl:relcl in

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.

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:


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]
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