LINGUIST List 26.412

Wed Jan 21 2015

Qs: Term for syntactic coordination and subordination

Editor for this issue: Anna White <awhitelinguistlist.org>


Date: 21-Jan-2015
From: Richard Evans <r.j.evanswlv.ac.uk>
Subject: Term for syntactic coordination and subordination
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Hello,

I work in natural language processing on the topic of automatic syntactic simplification. In this sub-field, researchers have used the term ''syntactic complexity'' to denote various syntactic phenomena, including subordination and coordination.

I note that in psycholinguistics and neurolinguistics, ''syntactic complexity'' includes object relative clauses and garden path sentences in its denotation but excludes coordination and subject relative clauses.
With a view to consistency, I wonder whether any researchers out there are aware of an acceptable ''umbrella term'' referring to both syntactic coordination and syntactic subordination. It will make descriptions of the language technology I am developing much easier!
Please let me know if you have any suggestions.

Many thanks in advance!
Richard


Linguistic Field(s): Cognitive Science
                            Computational Linguistics
                            Neurolinguistics
                            Psycholinguistics
                            Syntax

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