Abstract
In this paper, I present a corpus analysis of the role of iconicity in the placement of Czech temporal adverbial clauses which mark the subordinate event as either preceding or following the main clause. The analysis was based on Diessel (2008) who found iconicity to be a significant factor in the ordering of English temporal clauses. 500 instances of two 'before' (než, předtím než) and two 'after' (až, poté co) connectives were extracted from a corpus of written Czech.
After preprocessing of the data, a total of 1204 sentences was coded for an array of variables (e.g. iconicity, TAM categories of verbs, subject identity, etc.). Iconicity, status of the "head" (main or subordinate clause), and relative length of the subordinate clause were identified as significant predictors of clause order in the analysis using logistic regression.
While the data conform to the general tendency for subordinates to be placed after the superordinate clause (e.g. Havránek & Jedlička 1980), there was a stronger preference for this position in 'before' clauses in the analyzed sample, while 'after' clauses also frequently preceded the main clause.
Although the effect of iconicity is smaller than those of the other predictors, the results show that iconicity remains an important principle underlying linguistic structure even in the context of grammaticalized subordinators and the written medium, i.e. two factors strongly associated with syntacticity.