This book looks at the currently keenly discussed topic of the syntactic relationships between clauses. Using experimentation to obtain a firm data basis for claims, the author examines the evidence from nominal coreference and variable binding between clauses in German. The study aims to investigate the syntactic and processing differences between the way that central adverbial clauses - for example with a temporal meaning - and peripheral adverbial clauses - which may be adversative or concessive - are attached to their main clauses.

On the basis of the experimental data, this work proposes a new structural factor of "clause-command". The author shows that this can capture the patterns in anaphoric relationships across clausal boundaries more successfully than the traditional mechanism c-command. In particular, this new factor succeeds in providing an account of the gradient pattern of integration that we find in anaphoric interpretation across clauses.