adverbial phrases

[mallu]

djr wrote "All adverbial clauses involve subordination!"- So adverbial phrases are subordinate phrases?

[Daniel]

Adverbial phrases/clauses are embedded within another sentence, so, yes, they are subordinate by definition.

[mallu]

But is there something called subordinate phrases? What is the minimum requirement for group of words to be called a clause .

for example in the sentence "During the second world war I was in Germany"
Can "During the second world war" be called a Subordinate Phrase?

[Daniel]

The term "subordinate" is usually applied just to clauses, as I did in the original post.
But, sure, there's no reason you can't describe a "subordinate" phrase, in that it is embedded in something. That's just a basic fact of hierarchical structure.

I don't see the purpose in saying that though-- just "subordinate clause" is used often.


I suppose you could distinguish something like a "subordinate NP" from a "matrix NP" in a case like "book from [my friend]". Still, that would be an odd usage...

[mallu]

Is it necessary that in all the languages of the world subordinate clause should be embedded in the matrix clause? Is there any language in which a subordinate clause can appear sentence initially?

[Daniel]

English-- "[That we are linguists] is good."

Subordination refers to hierarchical structure-- as the subject of that sentence, "that we are linguists" is still subordinated/embedded. It doesn't matter whether it comes at the beginning, at the end, or in the middle.

Again, this is definitional. Something that is not subordinated might be, for example, coordinated:
"John sang a song and Mary rode a bike."
In that case, the two clauses are independent. But obviously neither is an adverbial clause.

[mallu]

You mean everything in a sentence which is not subordinated must be coordinated? Is there any in-between case which doesn't fall  in either category?
Moreover,Does the statement that adverbials involve subordination  tell anything more than adverbials are constituents of the sentences they are in?

[Daniel]

"In a sentence" means subordinated/embedded.

It is unclear exactly what the right analysis of coordination is, but the standard assumption is roughly this:
[a] & [ b]
For subordination:
[a [ b]]


Edit: fixed formatting

[mallu]

Sorry for asking another stupid question,
Here is a sentence from a Dravidian Language in which the presence of adverb as a separate category is disputed. 

(He.gen- effort result- adverbial form of copula)- I dative- job-get.past
Meaning - As a result of his effort I got a job
My question is whether the bracketed part is a (adverbial) clause or (adverbial)phrase,

[Daniel]

(He.gen- effort result- adverbial form of copula)- I possessive- job-get.past
Meaning - As a result of his effort I got a job
My question is whether the bracketed part is a (adverbial) clause or (adverbial)phrase,

It's definitely a phrase (any sequence of words is a phrase).
It has a form of the copula? Looks like it probably is some kind of clause. But it's hard to know from just one example.

[Jase]

Sorry for asking another stupid question,
Here is a sentence from a Dravidian Language in which the presence of adverb as a separate category is disputed. 

(He.gen- effort result- adverbial form of copula)- I possessive- job-get.past
Meaning - As a result of his effort I got a job
My question is whether the bracketed part is a (adverbial) clause or (adverbial)phrase,

Could you include a transcription of the sentence in the language itself?

[mallu]

A clause should have a verb and (all of? )its arguement. Isnt it?
Here the subject and object makes a single constituent(since the subject being in genitive)Does that put it in phrasal category?

[mallu]

A clause should have a verb and (all of? )its arguement. Isnt it?
Here the subject and object makes a single constituent(since the subject being in genitive)Does that put it in phrasal category?

Sorry for asking another stupid question,
Here is a sentence from a Dravidian Language in which the presence of adverb as a separate category is disputed. 

(He.gen- effort result- adverbial form of copula)- I possessive- job-get.past
Meaning - As a result of his effort I got a job
My question is whether the bracketed part is a (adverbial) clause or (adverbial)phrase,

Could you include a transcription of the sentence in the language itself?

Sorry for asking another stupid question,
Here is a sentence from a Dravidian Language in which the presence of adverb as a separate category is disputed. 

(He.gen- effort result- adverbial form of copula)- I possessive- job-get.past
Meaning - As a result of his effort I got a job
My question is whether the bracketed part is a (adverbial) clause or (adverbial)phrase,

Could you include a transcription of the sentence in the language itself?

Oh sure not very familiar with IPA so I use English alphabets
ayaaluTe sRmafalam       aayi                       enikku          jooli  kiTTi
he.Gen    effort result adverbial particle       I dative       job   got

[Daniel]

Note: I edited my post above to fix the formatting. Now it should be clearer.

Oh sure not very familiar with IPA so I use English alphabets
ayaaluTe sRmafalam       aayi                       enikku          jooli  kiTTi
he.Gen    effort result adverbial particle       I dative       job   got

Can that adverbial particle / copula be a different verb? If not, it's probably not a clause. Instead, it's a grammaticalized function of 'be' meaning something else, such as "with", etc. Maybe a preposition, for example.

A clause should have a verb and (all of? )its arguement. Isnt it?
Here the subject and object makes a single constituent(since the subject being in genitive)Does that put it in phrasal category?

That's complicated. One standard analysis is that not all parts of a clause must be expressed. For example, many infinitives in English are considered clauses:
"I want [to eat]."
"To eat" is a clause because it has a(n implied) subject.

[mallu]

The example is from Malayalam (Dravidian Family),There is no PNG inflectional morphology in the Language.The other languages of the family has PNG inflection for verbs and they use noninflected form(non-finite form?) forms of the verb,where as Malayalam has no way to make this distinction.

  The problem with the adverbial here is it has no subject , only object noun phrase is present in the sentence.That, I learn from your previous post,is not essential for a clause.But here I will give one example seems to be of the same structure which is apparently not clause.
ayaal      rajaavu             aayi                abhinayichchu
he Nom   king Nom          copula Past       act Past
Meaning. He acted as the king
Does it involve subordination ,If so what should be the structure?

ayaal    rajaavu             aayi       PRO         abhinayichchu

My intuition tells me the structure is not correct. Am I right?