Coordinating Constructions

This volume contains seventeen papers on coordinating constructions in languages from different families and different continents (see p.vii for a world map showing the most important languages treated in this book). The definition of the term coordination will be discussed in some detail in §11 below. For the moment we take it for granted that coordinating constructions can be identified on the basis of their symmetry: A construction [A B] is considered coordinate if the two parts A and B have the same status (in some sense that needs to be specified further), whereas it is not coordinate if it is asymmetrical and one of the parts is clearly more salient or important, while the other part is in some sense subordinate.