Coordination Relations in the Languages of Europe and Beyond

Book excerpt: This book examines the coding of the three coordination relations of combination, contrast and alternative between states of affairs on the basis of a 74 language sample, with special focus on the languages spoken in Europe. It constitutes the first systematic inquiry so far conducted on the cross-linguistic coding of coordination, as defined in cognitive and pragmatic terms. This research shows that the 'and-but-or' coding system which is typical of Central-Western Europe appears to be extremely rare outside Europe, where a great variation in the coding of coordination is attested. This cross-linguistic variation, however, is not random, but is crucially constrained by the interaction of economic principles with the semantic properties of the individual relations expressed. A fine-grained functional systematization of coordination is proposed and described by means of implicational patterns and semantic maps. This work brings together a broad cross-linguistic perspective and a detailed semantic analysis, largely based on new and comparable data collected by means of questionnaires, all accessible in the appendix of the book. It represents the first systematic attempt towards a unified typology of coordination relations.