Word order of adverbial subordinators within embedded clauses
Adverbial subordinators (AdvSb) are linguistic tools indicating the association of a non-finite subordinate clause of an adverbial meaning with the main clause.1 It is enough to consider how the language uses non-finite clauses to express reason (meanings such as because of), temporal relations (when, before, after, etc.), and conditional meanings (if, in case, etc.). The subordinate conjunction may appear before, after, or within the subordinate clause. Other strategies include the use of special verbal affixes.
Types:
NoNonfin: The language does not have non-finite embedded subordinate clauses.
NoAdvSb: The language does not use adverbial subordinators with embedded adverbial clauses.
InitAdvSb: An independent subordinator appears at the front of the subordinate clause.
FinalAdvSb: An independent subordinator appears at the end of the subordinate clause.
InternAdvSb: An independent subordinator appears within the subordinate clause.2
SuffAdvSb: The language uses suffixes as a means for embedded adverbial subordination that appear (directly or indirectly) after the verbal stem.
PrefAdvSb: The language uses prefixes as a means for embedded adverbial subordination that appear (directly or indirectly) before the verbal stem.
Using two types simultaneously may be obligatory, in which case the two parameter values should appear connected with the plus sign (+). In case the use of one of the tools is optional, we put the + sign and the optional value in parentheses. If the language uses different tools to express adverbial subordination and one of them is dominant, a slash (/) can separate the two values, with the dominant value appearing first.3
1: A clause can be considered a non-finite subordinate clause if it appears within a main clause that contains verbal predication, and has a participle, infinitival, gerundival, or nominalised form of a verb expressing a state or event that is different from the main clause predicate.
2: The position of the inner subordinator generally follows a specific rule, such as always appearing directly after the participle independently of the positioning of the arguments of such participles, etc. This should be specified in the commentary.
3: For example, the value InitAdvSb+VSuff refers to a language that requires the presence of both the sentence-initial subordinator and a suffix of the same function. InitAdvSb(+ VSuff), on the other hand, describes a language in which the sentence-initial subordinator is required, while the verbal suffix is optional. Note that if two strategies are available, but only one of them can be used at a time, they should be listed with an ampersand and no parentheses.