Clauses containing a clause adverbial can be paraphrased by using the syntactic frame: Het is adverb zo dat clause, as in (12); the adverb is placed in a main clause and therefore takes scope over the embedded clause, which contains the rest of the original clause.

This is illustrated in the (a)-example in (13) for the modal adverb waarschijnlijkprobably. The (b)-examples in (11) show that this test can also be applied to e.g. discourse particles such as toch.

Example (13a') is also acceptable without the element zo, but this does not mean that this element is optional in the paraphrase. Example (14a) shows that the clause adverbial waarschijnlijk can neither undergo comparative formation nor be prefixed with the negative element on-. The same facts are found in the paraphrase in (14b), but not in (14c), in which zo is omitted. Note that onwaarschijnlijk ziek in (14a) is possible with the degree reading “incredibly ill”; this is of course irrelevant here.

The difference between (14a-b) and (14c) is that in the former the adjectives waarschijnlijker and onwaarschijnlijk function as adverbial phrases, whereas in the latter they function as complementives predicated of a clausal logical subject (cf. Section 28.5.1); this was actually already suggested by the glosses. We may therefore conclude that zo is obligatory in the paraphrase in (12). This conclusion also explains why *Het is toch dat Jan morgen komt? is impossible: zo cannot be omitted in (13b') because toch cannot be used as a predicate.

Clauses containing a VP adverbial can be paraphrased by placing the adverb in a coordinated ... en pronoun doet dat adverb clause, in which the pronoun refers to the subject of the first conjunct. The adverb only modifies the doet dat-phrase, which in a sense pronominalizes the VP of the original clause. This is schematically represented in (15), where coreference is indicated by coindexation.

The examples in (16) illustrate this test for the manner adverb snelfast; here doet dat pronominalizes the VP (i.e. the complex predicate) naar de bakker rennento run to the bakery.

The two subsections above discussed the semantic tests for distinguishing between clause adverbials and VP adverbials. The examples in (17a) and (17b) show that the two paraphrases are often mutually exclusive: modal adverbs such as waarschijnlijk cannot be used in an ... en pronoun doet dat adverb clause, and manner adverbs such as snel cannot be used in the het is adverb zo dat ... frame.

However, this does not hold for all adverbs. For example, adverbs of time such as morgentomorrow can be used in both functions, i.e. either as clause adverbials or as VP adverbials. This is shown by the acceptability of the results of the two adverbial tests in the (b)-examples of (18).

This is also reflected in the fact that such adverbs can either precede or follow adverbs such as waarschijnlijkprobably, which must be interpreted as a clause adverbial according to the adverbial tests in the primed examples. We refer the reader to Section V8.2, in which it is shown that modal adverbs are low clause adverbials that can be used to indicate the boundary between the lexical and the functional domain of the clause.