Order and position of adverbial adjuncts

If several adverbial adjuncts appear in one clause, their order is not governed by strict rules, but by tendencies. The first tendency is for the adjunct of time to come before any other adjuncts. Any other adjuncts will follow with manner usually preceding place.

Note that this is different from the ‘usual’ order in English, where an adjunct of time tends to occur after other adjuncts: The girl is going by bike to her grandparents tomorrow.

If there is any other adjunct it tends to be positioned according to its relative importance in the sentence. If we add a purpose adjunct to the above example (voor een feestje – ‘for a party’), this could occur between the adjuncts of time and manner, between the adjuncts of manner and place, or after the adjunct of place.

The second tendency is for longer adjuncts to follow shorter ones. The purpose adjunct in the following example is relatively long and therefore best placed at the end:

From this it follows that the (very short) adverbs of place er, daar and hier are always placed first in any sequence of adjuncts.

Adjuncts also typically occur in the first and/or final positon of a clause: