Subordination in Conversation

The articles in this volume examine the notion of clausal subordination based on English, Estonian, Finnish, French, German and Japanese conversational data. Some of the articles approach ‘subordination’ in terms of social action, taking into account what participants are doing with their talk, considering topics such as the use of clauses as projector phrases and as devices for organizing the participant structure of the conversation. Other articles focus on the emergence of clause combinations diachronically and synchronically, taking on topics such as the grammaticalization of clauses and conjunctions into discourse markers, and the continuum nature of syntactic subordination. In all of the articles, linguistic forms are considered to be emergent from recurrent practices engaged in by participants in conversation. The contributions critically examine central syntactic notions in interclausal relations and their relevance to the description of clause combining in conversational language, to the structure of conversation, and to the interactional functions of language.

Mark Brenchley, University of Exeter, on Linguist List 22-3948 (2011):
The analyses presented are both interesting and insightful, and all highlight the value of studying actual language use in its specific context of use. Moreover, in their questioning of traditional accounts and provision of alternative analyses, the authors clearly highlight the need for giving further empirical thought to the nature and place of subordination within grammatical systems. Subordination, simply put, remains a central and yet to be fully understood topic within linguistic theory.
In terms of readership, Subordination in Conversation will be of interest to those seeking a more comprehensive and critical view of subordination based on cross-linguistic data,
particularly those inclined to treat grammatical phenomena as emerging from the way language is put to use. It will also be of interest to anyone concerned with the implications of modality for analyzing language, and specifically, the manner in which language-users combine clauses in order to frame and structure ongoing conversations.