Adpositional phrases are perhaps most typically used as adverbial phrases modifying a VP or a clause. The two instances can be distinguished by means of the two adverb tests in (48): clauses containing an adpositional phrase modifying the full clause can be paraphrased by means of the Het is PP zo dat ...'It is PP the case that ...' frame, whereas clauses containing an adpositional phrase modifying only the VP can be paraphrased by means of the ... en doet dat PP'... and does it PP' frame. Adverbially used adpositional phrases are always headed by a preposition.

Many adverbially used PPs are specialized for one of these two adverbial functions. This is illustrated in (49) for PPs headed by the prepositions namens'in the name of' and volgens'according to'; the (a)-examples show that the former can only be used as a VP-adjunct, and the (b)-examples show that the latter can only be used as clause adjunct.

The examples in (50) show that clause adjuncts precede modal and frequency adverbs such as waarschijnlijk'probably' and vaak'often' (which themselves are also clausal adverbs), whereas VP adjuncts follow them. Note that the direct object het huis can either precede or follow the modal adverb waarschijnlijk in (50), so that this does not interfere in the acceptability judgments.

      Spatial and temporal PPs can be used both as clause and as VP adjuncts; examples like (51a&b) are ambiguous between the readings in the primed examples. Note that, for some speakers, the preferred reading of (51b) is the one in (51b'') and that the reading in (51b') is only readily available if the PP is followed by an adverb of frequency; cf. (52).

The ambiguity of the primeless examples in (51) is consistent with the fact that adverbial PPs can either precede or follow clause adjuncts like the frequency adjective vaak'often' in (52); if the PPs precede vaak, the resulting readings correspond to the singly-primed examples in (51); if they follow the frequency adverb, the resulting readings correspond to the doubly-primed examples.

      Section 1.1.2.2 has shown that spatial adpositional phrases function as predicates (and the same thing will be shown later for temporal adpositional phrases). The difference between the complementive use and the adverbial use of adpositional phrases is that in the former case the adpositional phrase is predicated of some argument in the clause, whereas in the latter case it is predicated of some projection of the verb. This goes hand in hand with a (sometimes subtle) meaning contrast. The contrast is clearest with temporal PPs: on the VP-adjunct reading, (52a) expresses that Mary often performed the activity of “sleeping during the lesson”; on the clause reading, (a) expresses that, during the lessons, the event of Marie sleeping often took place. A similar contrast can be found in (52b); on the VP-adjunct reading, it is expressed that Marie often performed the activity of “sleeping in the classroom”; on the clause-adjunct reading, it is expressed that, in the classroom, the event of “Marie sleeping” often took place.