1 Subordination at the Interface : the Quasi-Subordination Hypothesis *

The subordination of clauses, and the recursion which results, lies at the heart of linguistic representation. Yet there are many aspects of subordination that are not fully understood. An enduring puzzle is that some clauses which appear to be structurally subordinate nevertheless pattern with main clauses in certain, but not all, respects. This paper posits that such clauses, which we term “quasi-subordinate” or “QS”, have both a syntactic and a pragmatic status which is intermediate between subordinate and main, in a way that can be precisely characterized in terms of the interface between the dynamics of discourse, the lexical semantics of sentential complement-taking predicates, and constraints on syntactic structure. In this way, we address the question of what it means to be “like” a main clause while not being one. The research aims to contribute to the theory of subordination from multiple perspectives, since the critical principles lie at the interface between syntax, pragmatics and semantics.

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