Catena (linguistics)

In linguistics, the catena (/kəˈtiːnə/, Latin for "chain"; plural catenae) is a unit of syntax and morphology, closely associated with dependency grammars. It is a more flexible and inclusive unit than the constituent and may therefore be better suited than the constituent to serve as the fundamental unit of syntactic and morphosyntactic analysis.

The catena concept was introduced to linguistics by William O'Grady in 1998 and has been seized upon by other linguists and applied to the syntax of idiosyncratic meaning of all sorts, such as ellipsis mechanisms (e.g. gapping, stripping, VP-ellipsis, pseudogapping, sluicing, answer ellipsis, comparative deletion), predicate-argument structures, and discontinuities (topicalization, wh-fronting, scrambling, extraposition, etc.). The catena concept has also been taken as the basis for a theory of morphosyntax, i.e. for the extension of dependencies into words; dependencies are acknowledged between the morphs that constitute words.

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