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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.
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