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In English, German, and even Spanish, there is a constituent which appears to be a a gray area between adverbs and conjunctions: the conjunctive adverb, or adverbial conjunction.

Examples of those are:

English: consequently, hence, therefore
German: darum, trotzdem, daher
Spanish: cuando, como, por lo tanto, en consequencia

Oddly, in Portuguese, there seem to be no adverbs classified as conjunctive adverbs. The word groups "por isso" and "em consequência" have exactly the same function as "hence" and "therefore" and bear "por lo tanto" and "en consequencia" as counterparts in Spanish, but they are classified solely as conjunctions, not adverbs.

I would like to know the reason behind this.

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  • I am a native speaker of Brazilian Portuguese
    – Incognito
    Jun 8, 2015 at 7:44
  • 3
    Conjunctive adverb is just a label for adverbs which sometimes occur in a particular position. It doesn't reflect any syntactic or semantic reality, and it doesn't name a distinct species of adverb. You are fortunate to work in a language whose grammarians have declined to participate in this fraud.
    – StoneyB on hiatus
    Jun 8, 2015 at 10:20
  • Are conjunctive adverbs conjunctions as well as adverbs?
    – Incognito
    Jun 8, 2015 at 12:48
  • I'd say No. "Conjunctive adverbs" do not 'conjoin' or fuse two clauses into a single constituent. They merely indicate the semantic or propositional relationship between adjacent clauses.
    – StoneyB on hiatus
    Jun 8, 2015 at 13:33
  • So subordinate clauses can only be introduced by conjunctions, not adverbs, right?
    – Incognito
    Jun 9, 2015 at 2:03

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The premise may be wrong. According to a few web searches, "consequentemente" does exist - see for example

http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=COM:2000:0127:FIN:PT:PDF

which would have been translated by a native speaker of European Portuguese, probably from English.

It could be that such instances usually come as a result of translation from languages that have it, especially English, and that "consequentemente" isn't particularly traditional. But if it was imported, that seems proof enough that it isn't forbidden in Portuguese.

Finally, I remember reading from Richard Feynman , who was learning Portuguese at the time, that "consequentemente" is something he decided to coin from his knowledge of adverb-building (he couldn't think of how to say "so".) He says that his using it was praised by one of his Brazilian interlocutors: "He speaks Portuguese! And with such wonderful words! CONSEQUENTEMENTE!"

You're the native speaker, so you could be the one to say that "consequentemente" isn't real Portuguese, but it is definitely out there.

https://books.google.de/books?id=7papZR4oVssC&pg=PA201&lpg=PA201&dq=feynman+consequentemente&source=bl&ots=etQYgelN-0&sig=TDewf4YPIXWggaWjyrXlm4GZ9MQ&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CCEQ6AEwAGoVChMItM664sCFxgIVhNcsCh1b9ADi#v=onepage&q=feynman%20consequentemente&f=false

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