This article examines the use of declarative (XV(S)A) vs. neutral (SVA)
word order in attributive clauses in spoken Danish. Overall, we find
that they display a low proportion of declarative word order (11%)
compared to nominal and adverbial subclauses, but this figure covers
substantial variation. The word order alternation is thus significantly
influenced by the factors syntactic function, conjunction, adverbial
type, length, and factuality of the subclause. Further, qualitative
analyses reveal that attributive clauses with declarative word order are
very often governed by a cataphoric element in their matrix clause.
We argue that the results support the hypothesis that declarative word
order functions as a foregrounder, though assertivity (factuality) also
seems to play a role.