The Coordination—Subordination Continuum

Bibliographic Data

ID23655591
AuthorsWilliam Croft (0000-0003-0886-2652, corresponding author)
Year2001
Pages320-361
Publication date2001-10-25
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeCHAPTER
VenueRadical Construction Grammar (SOURCE_BOOK)
PublisherOxford University PressOxford (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198299554.003.0009
OpenAlexW2479986774
ISBN9780198299554
LanguageEN
References cited139

The distinction between coordination and subordination is claimed to be a structural universal. However, the structural criteria used to distinguish coordination from subordination do not match up across languages. This chapter proposes a functional analysis of complex sentence structure in terms of the Gestalt distinction between figure and ground. Coordination and complements constitute a complex figure (following Wierzbicka), while adverbial clauses and relative clauses constitute a figure-ground structure (following Talmy and Reinhart). Coordination and complementation are linked by grammaticalization, via serial verb constructions, and adverbial clauses and relative clauses are also linked by grammaticalization. Comparative and conditional relations are ambivalent, and expressed crosslinguistically by either complex figure or figure-ground constructions. A conceptual space is presented to account for Cristofaro’s implicational hierarchies for different types of semantic relations between situations and their encoding as balanced (asserted, and more coordinate-like) and deranked (nonasserted, less coordinate-like) complex sentence constructions.

Adverbial · Combinatorics · Grammaticalization · Linguistics · Sentence · Subordination (linguistics) · Transitive relation · Computer Science · Historical Linguistics and Language Studies · Linguistics and Discourse Analysis · Mathematics · Philosophy · Syntax, Semantics, Linguistic Variation

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