Abstract Introduction Like Bierwisch 1980, Altmann 1987, Grewendorf and Zaefferer 1991, Wechsler 1991, Brandt, Reis, Rosengren and Zimmermann 1992, Lohnstein 2000, Gunlogson 2001, Zaefferer 2001 and much related work, the present paper contributes to sorting out the relation of syntactic properties of clauses (syntactic sentence types) to the ways in which the clauses can be used (illocutionary force, speech acts). The focus of this paper is on the role of movement of the finite verb to C (V-to-C).