Subordination [Paperback]

This book presents a typology of subordination systems across the world's languages. Traditional definitions of subordination are based on morphosyntactic criteria, such as clausal embedding or non-finiteness. The book shows that these definitions are untenable in a cross-linguistic perspective, and provides a cognitively based definition of subordination.

List of tables
Acknowledgements
Abbreviations
1. Theoretical premises
2. The notion of subordination
3. The coding of subordination
4. The cross-linguistic coding of subordination
5. Complement relations
6. Adverbial relations
7. Relative relations
8. Comparison of complement, adverbial, and relative relations
9. The coding of subordination relations
10. Correlations between individual morphosyntactic phenomena
11. Conclusions and prospects
Appendices
Bibliography
Index

The cross-linguistic analysis of aubordination presented in this book is, beyond a doubt, comprehensive, rigorous, carefully argued for and extensively documented. In addition , it is extremely well-written as well as user-friendly, avoiding unnecessary technicalities and presenting a priori complicated typological considerations in an accessible way. Last but not least, and doing full justice to the title of the series of which the present bookk forms part, Cristofaro shows how typology and linguistic theory can be insightfully combined to broaden the descriptive and explanatory perspectives on subordination expressed in the extensive formal and functional cognitive literature on the topic. --Folia Linguistica

Impressive in its scope...this is an important study which is bound to stimulate further research on subordination. --Linguist List

Sonia Cristofaroreceived her Ph.D. in Linguistics at the University of Pavia in 1998, and is now associate professor of Linguistics at the same university. Her main research areas include sl“'