La posición de las cláusulas temporales con cuando

Previous typological studies have shown that temporal clauses, unlike other adverbial clauses, can occur before or after the main clause, and this order variation has been observed across languages and within the same language. In the case of Spanish, some studies have found that temporal clauses tend to occur at the beginning of the clause. In this paper, we extend the assumptions of typological studies into the analysis of temporal clauses introduced by cuando ‘when’. Based in used data, we found that the initial position is preferred in oral data, while both positions are equally common in writing data. We examine some semantic, syntactic, and pragmatic motivations that, together, may explain this order variation: the semantic nature of cuando, sequential iconicity, length, and syntactic complexity, as well as pragmatic order.