Overview

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. Sonia Cristofaro shows that these definitions are untenable in a cross-linguistic perspective, and provides a cognitive based definition of subordination.The analysis is based on a representative 80 language sample, and represents the broadest study so far conducted on the cross-linguistic coding of several types of complement, adverbial, and relative sentence. These sentence types display considerable structural variation across languages. However, this variation turns out to be constrained, and appears crucially related to the functional properties of individual sentence types. This work is the first systematic attempt to establish comprehensive implicational hierarchies describing the coding of complement, adverbial, and relative sentences at a single stroke. Concepts from typological theory and cognitive linguistics are integrated to account for these hierarchies.

Full Product Details

9780199282005

Table of Contents

Reviews

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

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

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

`Review from previous edition ... a major cross-linguistic, typological study of subordination ... impressive in its scope ... an important study which is bound to stimulate further research on subordination, whether in individual languages or cross-linguistically.' LINGUIST List

Author Information

Sonia Cristofaro received 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 syntax, semantics, and typology. She is the author of a book on complementation in Ancient Greek (Aspetti della complementatione frasale in greco antico, 1996). Her publications also include various articles on the syntax and semantics of complex sentences.

Tab Content 6

Customer Reviews

Recent Reviews

Countries Available