Article published in:
Contexts of Subordination: Cognitive, typological and discourse perspectives
Edited by Laura Visapää, Jyrki Kalliokoski and Helena Sorva
[Pragmatics & Beyond New Series 249] 2014
► pp. 73–91

Is there really a syntactic category of subordination?

While different criteria are used in the literature in order to define subordinate clauses, these clauses are generally assumed to form a syntactic category, in the sense of a syntactically defined class that is relevant to speakers of individual languages. Many phenomena that are usually regarded as distinctive for subordination, however, do not actually provide evidence for such a category. This is illustrated in the paper with regard to syntactic embedding. Different criteria provide conflicting evidence as to the embedded vs. nonembedded status of particular clauses, the same criteria give different results for the same clause types in different contexts, and individual criteria do not always make it possible to identify distinct clause classes. This is because the various phenomena that are usually regarded as evidence for embedding are not actually motivated in terms of the same principles, nor are they syntactically motivated. Rather, these phenomena reflect a variety of semantic and pragmatic principles, and in some cases originate from diachronic processes independent of the syntactic status of the relevant clauses.
Published online: 04 September 2014
https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.249.03cri
References
Bybee, Joan
1986 “On the Nature of Grammatical Categories: a Diachronic Perspective.” In Proceedings of the Second Eastern States Conference on Linguistics, ed. by S. Choi, D. Devitt, W. Janis, T. McCoy, and Z.-S. Zhang, 17–34. The Ohio State University.Google Scholar
1998 “Irrealis as a Grammatical Category.” Anthropological Linguistics 40: 257–271.Google Scholar
Comrie, Bernard
2008 “Subordination, Coordination: Form, Semantics, Pragmatics.” In Subordination and Coordination in North Asian Languages, ed. by E.J. Vaida, 1–16. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Cristofaro, Sonia
2003 Subordination [Oxford Studies in Typology and Linguistic Theory]. Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
2009 “Grammatical Categories and Relations: Universality vs. Language-specificity and Construction-specificity.” Language and Linguistics Compass 3: 441–479. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Croft, William
1998 “Linguistic Evidence and Mental Representations.” Cognitive Linguistics 9: 51–73. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
2001 Radical Construction Grammar. Oxford: Oxford University Press. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Culicover, Peter W., and Ray Jackendoff
1997 “Semantic Subordination Despite Syntactic Coordination.” Linguistic Inquiry 28: 195–217.Google Scholar
Deane, Paul
1991 “Limits to Attention: A Cognitive Theory of Island Phenomena.” Cognitive Linguistics 2: 1–63. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Dryer, Matthew
1997 “Are Grammatical Relations Universal?” In Essays in Language Function and Language Type, ed. by Joan Bybee, John Haiman, and Sandra A. Thompson, 115–143. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Erteshik-Shir, Nomi, and Shalom Lappin
1979 “Dominance and the Functional Explanation of Island Phenomena.” Theoretical Linguistics 6: 41–86.Google Scholar
Haiman, John, and Sandra A. Thompson
1984 ‘Subordination’ in Universal Grammar. In Proceedings of the Tenth Annual Meeting of Berkeley Linguistic Society , 510–523.
Haspelmath, Martin
1995 “The Converb as a Cross-linguistically Valid Category.” In Converbs in Cross-linguistic Perspective, ed. by Martin Haspelmath, and Ekkehard König, 1–56. 
Berlin and New York: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
2004 “Does Linguistic Explanation Presuppose Linguistic Description?” Studies in Language 28: 554–579. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Heine, Bernd, and Tania Kuteva
2007 The Genesis of Grammar: A Reconstruction. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Heine, Bernd, and Mechthild Reh
1984 Grammaticalization and Reanalysis in African Languages. Hamburg: Helmut Buske.Google Scholar
Huddleston, Rodney D
1984 Introduction to the Grammar of English. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Kazenin, Konstantin, and Yakov G. Testelets
2004 “Where Coordination Meets Subordination: Converb Constructions in Tsakhur.” In Coordinating Constructions, ed. by Martin Haspelmath, 227–239. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Kuno, Susumo
1976 “Subject, Theme, and the Speaker’s Empathy.” In Subject and Topic, ed. by C.N. Li, 417–444. New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Langacker, Ronald W
1997 “Generics and Habituals.” In On Conditionals Again, ed. by Angeliki
 Athanasiadou, and René Dirven, 191–222. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
2008 “Subordination in Cognitive Grammar.” In Asymmetric Events, ed. by Barbara Lewandowska-Tomaszczyk, 137–149. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Lehmann, Christian
1988 “Towards a Typology of Clause Linkage.” In Clause Combining in Grammar and Discourse, ed. by John Haiman, and Sandra A. Thompson, 181–225. 
Amsterdam: John Benjamins. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Li, Charles N., and Sandra A. Thompson
1973 “Serial verb constructions in Mandarin Chinese: Coordination or Subordination?” In You Take the High Node and I’ll Take the Low Node: Papers from the Comparative Syntax Festival, ed. by Chicago Linguistics Society, 96–103.Google Scholar
Lord, Carol
1993 Historical Change in Serial Verb Constructions. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Mithun, Marianne
2009 “Re(e)volving Complexity: Adding Intonation.” In Syntactic Complexity, ed. by Talmy Givón, and Masayoshi Shibatani, 53–80. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Reinhart, Tanya
1983 Anaphora and Semantic Interpretation. London: Croom Helm.Google Scholar
Roberts, John R
1988 “Amele Switch-reference and the Theory of Grammar.” Linguistic Inquiry 19: 45–63.Google Scholar
Saxena, Anju
1988 “On Syntactic Convergence: The Case of the Verb say in Tibeto-Burman.” In Proceedings of the Fourteenth Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistic Society , 375–388.
Stassen, Leon
1985 Comparison and Universal Grammar. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.Google Scholar
Thompson, Sandra A
1985 “Grammar and Written Discourse: Initial vs. Final Purpose Clauses in English.” Text5: 55–84.Google Scholar
Westermann, Diedrich H
1961 Die Ewe-Sprache in Togo. Zweite berichtigte Aussage von E. Kähler-­Meyer. Berlin: De Gruyter.Google Scholar
Cited by

Cited by 3 other publications

Cristofaro, Sonia
2016.  In Insubordination [Typological Studies in Language, 115], ► pp. 393 ff. Crossref logo
Fong, Ronald
2017. Chinese Motion-Directional Construction: A Conceptual and Cognitive Analysis. Studies in Chinese Linguistics 38:2 ► pp. 119 ff. Crossref logo
Nikitina, Tatiana & Alexandra Vydrina
2020. Reported speech in Kakabe: Loose syntax with flexible indexicality . Folia Linguistica 54:1 ► pp. 133 ff. Crossref logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 26 april 2022. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.