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Systematic mismatches: Coordination and subordination at three levels of grammar1
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 09 December 2014
Abstract
In this paper, I analyze two clause combining strategies in Ossetic that exhibit mixed properties between coordination and subordination. I argue that the ‘mismatch approach’ proposed by Culicover & Jackendoff (1997) and Yuasa & Sadock (2002) is best suited to account for their properties. However, in order to adequately describe the behavior of these constructions in terms of the mismatch approach, appealing to three levels of grammar is required instead of two levels (syntax and semantics) discussed in previous works. This provides a clear argument in favor of models of grammar such as Lexical Functional Grammar (LFG), where the syntactic level is split between constituent structure (c-structure) and functional structure (f-structure). The properties of semantic coordination and subordination that have been proposed in earlier work mostly belong to the level of f-structure, and not semantics proper. I argue that the only substantial semantic difference between coordination and adverbial subordination is that the former introduces discourse relations between speech acts, while the latter introduces asserted predicates that link two propositions within the same speech act. I provide definitions of coordination and subordination at all the three levels of grammar formalized in terms of the LFG framework, and discuss the tests that can be used for each of these levels.
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- Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2014
Footnotes
This paper has had a long history, and many thanks are due to the various people who have contributed to its development. I am especially thankful to Mary Dalrymple, without whose encouragement and meticulous reading of the manuscript, as well as help with the details of the LFG formalism, this paper would not have appeared in its present form. The semantic side of the paper has benefited greatly from discussions with Elena Paducheva and Dag Haug, due to their valuable insights about the meanings of coordinating conjunctions. I am also thankful to Marina Chumakina, Yury Lander, Mati Pentus, Natalia Serdobolskaya, Andrey Shluinsky, Andrey Sideltsev, three anonymous Journal of Linguistics referees, and four anonymous Natural Language & Linguistic Theory (NLLT) referees, who have provided numerous helpful comments and corrections. I am grateful to Ewa Jaworska at JL for her editorial work. I would also like to thank all of the native speakers of Ossetic I consulted during my 2010–2013 fieldwork, in particular Madina Darchieva (V.I. Abaev Institute for Social Research and the Humanities, Vladikavkaz) and Zalina Dzuceva (North Ossetian State University, Vladikavkaz). Any misinterpretations of the judgements they have provided are entirely my own fault. All errors are mine.
This research has been supported by the Russian Science Foundation, project No. 14-18-03270 ‘Word order typology, communicative-syntactic interface and information structure in world's languages’.
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