Coordination (linguistics)

In linguistics, coordination is a frequently occurring complex syntactic structure that links together two or more elements, known as conjuncts or conjoins. The presence of coordination is often signaled by the appearance of a coordinator (coordinating conjunction), e.g. and, or, but (in English). The totality of coordinator(s) and conjuncts forming an instance of coordination is called a coordinate structure. The unique properties of coordinate structures have motivated theoretical syntax to draw a broad distinction between coordination and subordination. Coordination is one of the most studied fields in theoretical syntax, but despite decades of intensive examination, theoretical accounts differ significantly and there is no consensus about the best analysis.

Coordination is a very flexible mechanism of syntax. Any given lexical or phrasal category can be coordinated. The examples throughout this article employ the convention whereby the conjuncts of coordinate structures are marked using square brackets and bold script. The coordinate structure each time includes all the material that follows the left-most square bracket and precedes the right-most square bracket. The coordinator appears in normal script between the conjuncts.

Data of this sort could easily be expanded to include every lexical and phrasal category. An important aspect of these data is that the conjuncts each time are indisputably constituents. In other words, the material enclosed in brackets would qualify as a constituent in both phrase structure grammars and dependency grammars.

A coordinator (= coordinating conjunction) often appears between the conjuncts, usually at least between the penultimate (second to last) and ultimate (last) conjunct of the coordinate structure. The words and and or are by far the most frequently occurring coordinators in English. Other coordinators occur less often and have unique properties, e.g. but, as well as, then, etc. The coordinator usually serves to link the conjuncts and indicate the presence of a coordinate structure. Depending on the number of coordinators used, coordinate structures can be classified as syndetic, asyndetic, or polysyndetic.

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