The research reported here is intended as a contribution to an
understandingof the adverbial clauses, used by speakers in
spontaneous communication.This study, following Ford''s model for
analyzing the adverbial clauses in herEnglish conversation
corpus (1993), aims at investigating adverbial clausesin
spoken Mandarin conversations on the basis of quantitative
analysis. Thereare four-hour conversationdatabase in this
dissertation research, consistingof 19 texts. The adverbial
clauses in the database were categorized into (i)preposed
clauses to their modified material across continuing intona-
tion,(ii) postposed clauses to their modified material across
continuing intonation, and (iii) postposed clauses to their
modified material across final intona-tion (rising question
intonation or final intonation). After an inspection ofthe
data, the findings suggest that thetemporal, conditional, and
concessiveclauses are favored to occur before their modified
material, but the causalclauses, after their associated
material. Causals appear as separated, intona-tionally
disconnected units far more often than do temporals,
conditionals,andconcessives. The data also show that causal
clauses are fundamentally differ-ent from temporal, conditional,
and concessive onesin their use. Especiallythe final causals
appear to serve a quitedifferent function, being more in
thenature of coordinate clauses rather than subordinate ones,
which comment on acause, relevant to the preceding clause. This
is related to the type of infor-mation they ususally introduce.
Causal conjunctions usually introduce back-grund, support,
and motivation for their associated material, while temporaland
conditional clauses are prototypically discourse linking and
framing intheir function--the former dealing with time and
the latter involving hypo-theticality. On the whole, my data
support Ford''s claim that initial adverbialclauses form pivotal
points in the development of talk and present
explicitbackground for material that follows; on the other hand,
the adverbial clausesappearing after their associated clause
only complete a unit of informationwithout creating discourse-
level links or shifts.In contrast, when placedafter its
associated material but in continuous intonation, an
adverbialclause only presents new information elaborating the
associated clause. Yet,different from the former, whose
continuing intonation signals that there ismore to come and the
present utterance is still in progress, the adverbialclauses
following final intonation, though emerging through
conjunctions asextensions of previous units, also represent
separate and intonationally dis-connected units. Finally a
comparison of the placement of adverbial clauseswith respect to
their modified material between spoken and written data re-
veals that final causals in the spoken data outnumber ones in
the writtendata. We suggest that the preference for
causals occurring after theirmodified material in
conversation results from the interactional need.