Sank's Glossary of Linguistics 
 Coo-Cou

COOPERATIVE PRINCIPLE

  1. (Pragmatics) Our talk exchanges do not normally consist of a succession of disconnected remarks, and would not be rational if they did. They are characteristically, to some degree at least, cooperative efforts; and each participant recognizes in them, to some extent, a common purpose or set of purposes, or at least a mutually accepted direction. This purpose or direction may be fixed from the start (e.g., by an initial proposal of a question for discussion), or it may evolve during the exchange; it may be fairly definite, or it may be so indefinite as to leave very considerable latitude to the participants (as in a casual conversation). But at each stage, some possible conversational moves would be excluded as conversationally unsuitable. We might then formulate a rough general principle which participants will be expected (ceteris paribus) to observe, namely:


     One might label this the Cooperative Principle.
     On the assumption that some such general principle as this is acceptable, one may perhaps distinguish four categories under one or another of which will fall certain more specific maxims and submaxims, the following of which will, in general, yield results in accordance with the Cooperative Principle. Echoing Kant, I call these categories Quantity, Quality, Relation, and Manner.
     The category of Quantity relates to the quantity of information to be provided, and under it fall the following maxims:

    1. Make your contribution as informative as is required (for the current purposes of the exchange).
    2. Do not make your contribution more informative than is required.

     Under the category of Quality falls a supermaxim—"Try to make your contribution one that is true"—and two more specific maxims:

    1. Do not say what you believe to be false.
    2. Do not say that for which you lack adequate evidence.

     Under the category of Relation I place a single maxim, namely, "Be relevant."
     Finally, under the category of Manner, which I understand as relating not (like the previous categories) to what is said but, rather, to how what is said is to be said, I include the supermaxim—"Be perspicuous"—and various maxims such as:

    1. Avoid obscurity of expression.
    2. Avoid ambiguity.
    3. Be brief (avoid unnecessary prolixity).
    4. Be orderly.

     And one might need others.
     It is obvious that the observance of some of these maxims is a matter of less urgency than is the observance of others. A man who has expressed himself with undue prolixity would, in general, be open to milder comment than would a man who has said something he believes to be false. | H. Paul Grice, 1975
  2. (Pragmatics) In addition to identifying the phenomenon of implicature, and classifying its types, Grice developed a theory designed to explain and predict conversational implicatures and to describe how they are understood. Grice (1975) postulated a general Cooperative Principle and four maxims specifying how to be cooperative. It is common knowledge, he asserted, that people generally follow these rules for efficient communication.
    Cooperative Principle
    Contribute what is required by the accepted purpose of the conversation.
    • Maxim of Quality. Make your contribution true; so do not convey what you believe false or unjustified.
    • Maxim of Quantity. Be as informative as required.
    • Maxim of Relation. Be relevant.
    • Maxim of Manner. Be perspicuous; so avoid obscurity and ambiguity, and strive for brevity and order.
     Grice viewed these not as arbitrary conventions, but as instances of general rules governing rational, cooperative behavior. For example, if Jane is helping Kelly build a house, she will hand Kelly a hammer rather than a tennis racket (relevance), more than one nail when several are needed (quantity), and straight nails rather than bent ones (quality); she will do all this quickly and efficiently (manner). | Wayne Davis, 2024

COOPTATION

  1. (Discourse) A cognitive-communicative operation whereby some fragment of linguistic discourse is transferred from one domain of discourse to another (Kaltenböck et al. 2011, Heine 2013, Heine et al. 2013). The following example, taken from a private dialog, illustrates this operation.

    1. What I've done here   I hope you don't entirely disapprove   is try and limit the time taken on this item by putting it in writing. (International Corpus of English)

     Cooptation is fully productive, that is, it can be employed any time by speakers to structure their discourse contributions. In example (1), the utterance is obviously composed of two pieces: On the one hand, there is the syntactically and semantically well-formed and self-contained sentence, which provides the host utterance—in short, the host. On the other hand, there is the interpolated piece—somehow an odd element that is neither syntactically nor semantically, nor prosodically integrated. Interpolations such as this are commonly known as disjunct constituents (Espinal 1991), parentheticals (e.g., Dehé and Kavalova 2007, Dehé 2009), extra-clausal constituents (Dik 1997), or as theticals in the framework of Discourse Grammar. We will refer to them as coopted units (CUs), and cooptation is an operation that enables speakers to interpolate a CU in a host.
     While not necessarily honoring semantic and/or syntactic conventions, cooptation is taken by interlocutors to result in acceptable utterances. | Bernd Heine, Gunther Kaltenböck , Tania Kuteva, and Haiping Long, 2017
  2. (Discourse) Heine (2013) rejects both grammaticalization and pragmaticalization as the diachronic processes that account for the semantic bleaching of discourse markers (DMs), and cogently argues that DMs undergo the process of cooptation, whereby "a chunk of SG [sentence grammar], such as a clause, a phrase, a word, or any other unit is deployed for use as a thetical" (Kaltenböck et al. 2011, quoted in Heine 2013). Cooptation explains why DMs are optional in a syntactic sense (and, therefore, do no affect the truth-conditions of the sentence), since theticals are, by definition, outside the syntactic structure of the sentence. | Bálint Péter Furkó, 2014

COORDINATE STRUCTURE CONSTRAINT
(Syntax) In generative syntax, a constraint on movement, proposed in Ross (1967), which says:

Coordinate Structure Constraint
In a coordinate structure, no conjunct may be moved, nor may any element contained in a conjunct be moved out of that conjunct.
 The CSC explains the ungrammaticality of (1) and (2), which violate the first and the second clause of the CSC, respectively.
  1.  * which professor did you divide the cake between [ Mieke and  t  ]
  2.  * which book did you [VP [VP steal  t  from Ger ] and [VP give the paper to Jacqueline ] ]
 Well-known exceptions to the CSC are Across-the-Board extractions. (George 1980, Pesetsky 1982, Ross 1967) | Utrecht Lexicon of Linguistics, 2001
See Also ACROSS-THE-BOARD.

COORDINATION
(Grammar) Refers to the juxtaposition of two or more conjuncts often linked by a conjunction such as and or or. The conjuncts (e.g., our friend and your teacher in Our friend and your teacher sent greetings) may be words or phrases of any type. They are a defining property of coordination, while the presence or absence of a conjunction depends on the specifics of the particular language.
 As a general phenomenon, coordination differs from subordination in that the conjuncts are typically symmetric in many ways: they often belong to like syntactic categories, and if nominal, each carries the same case. Additionally, if there is extraction, this must typically be out of all conjuncts in parallel, a phenomenon known as Across-the-Board extraction.
 Extraction of a single conjunct, or out of a single conjunct, is prohibited by the Coordinate Structure Constraint. Despite this overall symmetry, coordination does sometimes behave in an asymmetric fashion. Under certain circumstances, the conjuncts may be of unlike categories or extraction may occur out of one conjunct, but not another, thus yielding apparent violations of the Coordinate Structure Constraint. In addition, case and agreement show a wide range of complex and sometimes asymmetric behavior cross-linguistically. This tension between the symmetric and asymmetric properties of coordination is one of the reasons that coordination has remained an interesting analytical puzzle for many decades. | Grant Goodall, 2017

COORDINATION OF LIKES

  1. (Syntax) In the literature on coordination, it is widely assumed that two elements may be coordinated only if they are of the same syntactic category. This assumption is known as the Law of Coordination of Likes. In addition, a common assumption with respect to initial coordination, which is characterized by the presence of a pair of elements such as either-or, both-and and neither-nor, is the assumption that the first element of the pair marks the left edge of the coordinate structure. Schwarz (1999) terms this assumption the Left Bracket Thesis. Neijt (1979), Sag et al. (1985), van Zonneveld (1992) and Grootveld (1994), among others, adopt both of these assumptions for their analysis of coordination. | Petra Hendriks, 2001
  2. (Syntax) The Law of the Coordination of Likes states, in general, that only conjuncts of the same type can be coordinated, while unlike coordination refers to coordination where conjuncts are of different types. The Law has its roots in the traditional approach to the structure of coordination regarded as flat with structurally equal conjuncts, in the sense that no conjunct is more salient than others. In compliance with this symmetrical approach to the structure of coordination, it has been assumed that, in order for the conjuncts to be grammatically coordinated, they have to be the so-called like conjuncts.
     The notion of the "likeness" of conjuncts has been variously interpreted in the literature. For example:


     | Anna Prażmowska, 2014

COORDINATION TEST

  1. (Syntax) The coordination test assumes that only constituents can be coordinated, i.e., joined by means of a coordinator such as and, or, or but: The next examples demonstrate that coordination identifies individual words as constituents:

    1. a. Drunks could put off the customers.
      b. Drunks and bums could put off the customers.
      c. Drunks could and would put off the customers.
      d. Drunks could put off and drive away the customers.
      e. Drunks could put off the customers and neighbors.

     Underscoring marks the conjuncts of the coordinate structures. Based on these data, one might assume that drunks, could, put off, and customers are constituents in the test sentence because these strings can be coordinated with bums, would, drive away, and neighbors, respectively. Coordination also identifies multi-word strings as constituents:

    1. a. Drunks could put off the customers and the neighbors.
      b. Drunks could put off the customers and drive away the neighbors.
      c. Drunks could put off the customers and would drive away the neighbors.

     These data suggest that the customers, put off the customers, and could put off the customers are constituents in the test sentence. | Wikipedia, 2025
  2. (Examples)
     ○ The application of the coordination test brings variable results for N+N and N+A compounds and compound-like expressions in Polish. | Bożena Cetnarowska, 2015
     ○ Are the noun phrase (NP) a republican in Pat became a republican and the adjective phrase (AdjP) quite conservative in Pat became quite conservative two different arguments, belonging to separate valence schemata of BECOME, or two different realizations of one argument specified in a single schema? Walenty (a comprehensive valence dictionary of Polish) is explicit about what counts as the same argument, and it employs the coordination test to resolve such doubts: if two phrase types can be felicitously coordinated in the same sentence, they are different realizations of the same argument. | Adam Przepiórkowski, Elżbieta Hajnicz, Agnieszka Patejuk, Marcin Woliński, Filip Skwarski, and Marek Świdziński, 2014
     ○ It is generally assumed that only constituents can be coordinated. Thus, (1a) is well-formed since sells expensive cars and rents cheap trucks each form a syntactic unit (i.e. VP). Example (1b), on the contrary, is ill-formed since sells expensive does not form a constituent.

    1. a. Peter sells expensive cars and rents cheap trucks
      b. * Peter sells expensive and rents cheap cars

     The coordination test, however, might hint at the constituency of the subject-DP and the verb in sentences like (2), that are known as right-node-raising sentences.

    1.  Peter sells and Bill rents expensive cars

     Thus, the coordination test appears to provide conflicting evidence at the surface. | Lisa Lai-Shen Cheng and Norbert Corver, 2013

COPULA

  1. (Grammar) An intransitivity verb which links a subject to a noun phrase, adjective, or other constituent which expresses the predicate.

    1. The book is on the table.
    2. The weather seems good.

     (Crystal 1980, Hartmann and Stork 1972, Schachter 1985, Quirk, Greenbaum, Leech, and Svartvik 1985, Mish 1991) | SIL Glossary of Linguistic Terms, 2003
  2. (Grammar) As is the case with many concepts borrowed from traditional linguistics, copulas turn out to be an extremely challenging notion to define, and most works that involve an analysis of be and its cross-linguistic equivalents simply take the notion for granted. (1) gives a prototypical example of a bona fide copula:

    1. John is sick.

     This English example displays the properties that are prototypically associated with copulas:

    1. Copulas carry verbal inflection.
    2. Copulas appear in contexts where the predicate is nonverbal.
    3. Copulas are elements used to link the predicate and the subject—as the term itself suggests—from Latin copula 'link'.
    4. Copulas are semantically light, possibly empty.

     | Antonio Fábregas, María J. Arche, and Rafael Marín, 2019

COPULAR VERB
(Grammar) A verb which links a subject to an adjective. For example, in English: She looks happy; That sounds interesting; This smells great.
 Common English copular verbs are be (specifically copular be), seem, appear, become and get, and sense-related verbs of perception such as look, sound, smell, feel and taste. | Teflpedia, ?

COPY EPENTHESIS
(Phonology) Describes a class of patterns in which the quality of an epenthetic vowel depends on the quality of one of its vocalic neighbors. For example: in a language where underlying /pri/ is realized as [piri] but /pra/ as [para] (not *[pira]), the vowel that appears in the unexpected position (the copy) is featurally identical to the vowel that appears in the expected position (its host).
 How the dependence between a copy vowel and its host should be formalized is a matter of debate:

 | Juliet Stanton and Sam Zukoff, 2017

COPY RAISING

  1. (Syntax) A kind of raising construction in which the raised element leaves a coreferential copy pronoun in the subordinate clause. Alternatively, the copy may appear in the matrix clause (as evidenced by verb agreement, for example) with the copied nominal remaining in the complement; see the Blackfoot example below.

    1. English
      Richard seems as if he won.
      (Compare with ordinary raising: Richard seems to have won.)
    2. Modern Greek
      I
      the
      kopéles
      girls
      fén-onde
      seem-3PL
      na
      that
      févgh-un.
      leave-3PL
      'The girls seem to be leaving.'
    3. Blackfoot
      Nitsíksstatawa
      1-want-3S
      kááhkanistahsi
      2-might-tell-3S
      nohkówa.
      1-son-3S
      'I want you to tell my son.'
      (Compare without the raising:)
      Nitsíksstaa
      1-want
      kááhkanistahsi
      2-might-tell-3S
      nohkówa.
      1-son-3S
     (Fritz 1978, 1979, 1980) | Glottopedia, 2007
  2. (Syntax) A phenomenon in which a raising verb takes a nonexpletive subject and a complement containing an obligatory pronominal copy of the subject:

    1. a. Thora seems like she adores popsicles.
      b. * Thora seems like Isak adores popsicles.

     English copy raising was initially noticed by Postal (1978) and was also touched on by Rogers (1971, 1974) in work that principally concerned what he called flip perception verbs (Rogers 1971, 1972, 1974, 1974). The topic has recently received renewed attention in work by Potsdam and Runner (2001) and Asudeh (2002, 2004). The first detailed investigation of copy raising was Joseph's (1976) work on Modern Greek, which was subsequently brought to wider attention by Perlmutter and Soames (1979). Copy raising is in fact not typologically uncommon and has been attested in a number of unrelated languages, including Samoan (Chung 1978), Hebrew (Lappin 1984), Irish (McCloskey and Sells 1988), Haitian Creole (Déprez 1992), Igbo (Ura 1998), and Turkish (Moore 1998). | Ash Asudeh and Ida Toivonen, 1998

COPY THEORY OF MOVEMENT

  1. (Syntax) Chomsky (1993) incorporates the copy theory of movement into the Minimalist Program. According to the copy theory, a trace is a copy of the moved element that is deleted in the phonological component (in the case of overt movement), but is available for interpretation at LF. Besides being compatible with the Inclusiveness Condition, the copy theory has the advantage of allowing binding theory to be stated solely in LF terms and dispensing with the operation of reconstruction. Furthermore, if traces are copies, they are not discrete theoretical primitives by themselves; they are either lexical items or phrases built from lexical items. By making it possible to promote this overall simplification of the theoretical apparatus in GB, the copy theory has thus become a solid pillar of the Minimalist Program. | Jairo Nunes, 1995
  2. (Syntax) Chomsky (1993) revives the copy theory of movement, according to which a moved element leaves behind a copy of itself, rather than a trace. The conceptual underpinning for the revival of the copy theory is provided by the Inclusiveness Condition (see Chomsky 1995), a conceptually appealing condition that confines the power of syntax to (re-)arrangements of lexical items, banning syntax from creating new objects. Traces are prime examples of creationism in syntax and, as such, violate the Inclusiveness Condition. Chomsky (1993) demonstrates that in addition to conforming to the Inclusiveness Condition, the copy theory considerably simplifies the analysis of reconstruction phenomena. Furthermore, by making it possible to treat reconstruction as an LF phenomenon, the copy theory contributes to the research attempt to eliminate noninterface levels of representation. Another attractive feature of the copy theory is that, by eliminating traces, it reduces the number of theoretical primitives in our inventory. If traces are copies, they are either lexical items or complex objects built from lexical items; they are not new primitives. Replacement of traces by copies thus leads to an overall simplification of the grammar and this by itself explains why the copy theory became one of the pillars of the minimalist framework. | Željko Bošković and Jairo Nunes, 2008

COPYING
(Syntax) A basic syntactic operation within the framework of Transformational Grammar which adds a duplicate of a constituent in a phrase-marker to some other part of the phrase-marker. E.g., to make a rule deriving tag questions from such sentences as He is a doctor, the verb is taken and copied to the right of the sentence (changing its status from positive to negative); the tag-subject is a pronominal copy of the main subject, placed to the right of this verb. This would be one way of generating the sentence He is a doctor, isn't he? The verb is copied only if it is auxiliary or copula, and replaced by a form of do otherwise (e.g. John knows the answers, doesn't he). | David Crystal, 2008

CORE TRANSITIVE VERB
(Grammar) The transitive verbs of a language are, loosely speaking, those verbs that display the unmarked expression of arguments for two-argument verbs. Their arguments are said to bear the core grammatical relations subject and object.
 Many discussions of transitivity recognize a core—and perhaps for that reason privileged—subset of transitive verbs. These verbs have a clear semantic characterization, fitting the "agent acts on and causes an effect on patient" mold that is behind the name transitive. Members of this set in English include cut, destroy, kill, and transitive break and open. I call these verbs, which are defined by a conjunction of syntactic and semantic properties, core transitive verbs (CTVs); these are roughly equivalent to what Andrews (1985) calls primary transitive verbs. Given this definition, CTVs are verbs that qualify as "highly" transitive in Hopper and Thompson's 1980 sense, and their arguments clearly meet Dowty's 1991 agent and patient proto-role entailments. | Beth Levin, 1999

CORONAL STOP DELETION

  1. (Phonology) In English this involves a variable phonological process deleting coronal stops from final coda clusters. It operates variably in all varieties of English and is everywhere conditioned by the morphological status of the targeted stop.  | Gregory R. Guy, 1996
  2. (Phonology) In conversational English, word-final coronal stops in consonant clusters are variably omitted, a process known as coronal stop deletion (CSD). As with other variable processes, the probability of any such stop being deleted is sensitive to a range of contextual factors. In the case of CSD, the strongest conditioning factor is the segment that comes after the coronal stop: deletion rates are dramatically lower before vowels than before consonants. This empirical fact, which I refer to as the following segment effect (FSE), has been observed in quantitative CSD studies across many different English varieties, including general American English (Labov et al. 1968, Wolfram 1969, Guy 1980, African American English (Labov et al. 1968, Wolfram 1969, Fasold 1972, Labov 1972), Chicano English (Santa Ana 1991), Appalachian English (Wolfram and Christian 1976, Hazen 2011), British English (Tagliamonte and Temple 2005), Canadian English (Walker 2012), New Zealand English (Holmes and Bell 1994, Guy et al. 2008), Singapore English (Lim and Guy 2005, Gut 2007), Hong Kong English (Hansen Edwards 2016), Nigerian English (Gut 2007), and even the English-lexified Jamaican Creole (Patrick 1991). | Meredith Tamminga, 2018
  3. (Phonology) English Coronal Stop Deletion (CSD)—the phenomenon that words like fact [fækt – fæk] can be pronounced with or without a coronal stop /t, d/—has been studied in many varieties of English such as American English (Purse 2021), Canadian English (Walker 2012), Singapore English (Lim and Guy 2005), and Southern British English (Baranowski and Turton 2020). One line of research on CSD focuses on its sensitivity to morphological contexts, that deletion is more frequent within monomorphemes, such as pact, than across morpheme boundaries, such as packed (Guy 1980, Guy and Boyd 1990). There are three accounts for such sensitivity.

    1. The functional account argues that the past tense morpheme's higher functional load makes it more resistant to deletion (MacKenzie and Tamminga 2021).
    2. Baranowski and Turton (2020) believe that morphological structure serves as a constraining factor on the variable deletion rule.
    3. Guy (1991) argues that differences at the derivational level for different categories account for the varying deletion rates.

     Another line of CSD research is on the question of whether there is categorical or gradient deletion (Scobbie 2007, Purse 2019, 2021). Categorical deletion means that there is always full deletion, and gradient deletion is when there is variation in deletion along a continuum. | Yunting Gu and Ryan Peters, 2024

CORRELATE

  1. (Syntax) 
    Correlate (To Be Revised)
    A head h can be a correlate for a head h′ if h and h′ are tokens of the same lexical item.
     This definition of correlation is that the only valid correlate of a head is a lexically identical head. For the correlate relation to capture the data effectively, however, it should allow the elision of heads to be licensed relative to correlates that are traces or wh elements, and full DPs, including quantified DPs.
    Correlate (Final)
    A node n can be a correlate for a head h iff at least one of the following conditions holds:
    1. n is a head and n and h are tokens of the same lexical item.
    2. n is coindexed with h.
     | Deniz Rudin, 2019
  2. (Syntax) 
    Correlate
    A node n can be a correlate of a head h iff the content of n is either lexically or referentially identical to h.
     Lexical identity is straightforward. Referential identity is defined in terms of coindexation. Consider the following data (comparable cases are discussed in Merchant 2001):
    1. I don't know who1 ti said what2, or why <they1 said it2>E.
    2. I think [a guy I know]1 won a gold medal, but I don't know when <he1 won a gold medal>E.
    3. Someone ate at [five burger restaurants]1, but I don't know who <ate at them1>E.
     Examples (1-3) show that traces, wh elements, pronouns, and full DPs, including quantified DPs, can serve as correlates for each other. | Margaret Kroll and Deniz Rudin, 2017

CORRELATIVE CONJUNCTION

  1. (Grammar) Either of a pair of coordinating conjunctions used in ordered fashion. Typically, one is used immediately before each member of a pair of constituents.

    1. English
      Either you or I.

     | SIL Glossary of Linguistic Terms, 2003
  2. (Grammar) Link words that consist of two parts and are used to give emphasis to the combinations of two structures that are balanced (Sahebkeir and Aidinlou 2014). They are regarded as team conjunctions because they are used in pairs. They get their name from the fact that they work together (co-) and relate one sentence element to another. Correlative conjunctions are more similar to coordinating conjunctions in that the sentence fragments they connect are fairly equal. Lester notes that correlative conjunctions are very similar to coordinating conjunctions except that they are two-part conjunctions. They include: either...or, neither...nor, both...and, as many...as, whether...or, not only...but also, such...that, so...that, hardly...when, scarcely...when, no sooner...than, not...but, etc. Sentential examples:

    1. a. I want either eba or amala.
      b. Neither a borrower nor a lender be.
      c. I have both eba and amala.
      d. There are as many curtains as there are windows.
      e. He was not sure whether he was losing or winning.
      f. She was not only mean but also rude.
      g. Such was the nature of their relationship that they never would have made it even if they wanted to.
      h. I had scarcely walked in the door when I got the call and had to run back.
      i. I had no sooner finished my studies than I got a job.

     | Abraham Sunday Unubi, 2014

CORRESPONDENCE DIAGRAM

(Phonology) In a correspondence diagram of the Dutch word [bɛt] 'bed' the input and output segments that are correspondents of one another are connected by vertical lines.

Correspondence diagram of [bɛt]
 /b ɛ d/ Input
   | | |
 [b ɛ t] Output
 | René Kager, 1997

CORRESPONDENCE THEORY

  1. (Optimality Theory) The branch of phonology studying the nature of conditions that measure the similarity of two related forms (such as input and output, base and derivative, base and reduplicant). Correspondence theory originates in pre-OT days when linguists like Allan Sommerstein, Ronnie Wilbur, Sandy Chung, and Luigi Burzio (in his pre-OT incarnation) were first led to formulate conditions mandating input recoverability or similarity between related forms.
     It has become a central part of phonological theory with the advent of OT. Within OT, the theory of correspondence has the primary function of defining the limits within which markedness constraints will affect an input. Extensions of correspondence provide the basis of the OT treatment for phenomena such as:


     | Javier Gutiérrez-Rexach, 2007
  2. (Optimality Theory) Constraints can be categorized into two main types: faithfulness constraints, which require identity between the input and the output in various ways, and markedness constraints, which impose well-formedness conditions on output structures. With the advent of Correspondence Theory (McCarthy and Prince 1995), the concept of faithfulness received a new dimension. This theory, embedded within the general OT framework, determines correspondence relations between two structures, their similarity being evaluated by faithfulness constraints. Correspondence relations no longer hold between inputs and outputs, but also between bases and reduplicants, or between two output forms. These extensions of correspondence provide the basis of the OT treatment of phenomena such as opacity or paradigm uniformity. The Optimal Paradigms model (McCarthy 2005) is an example of a theory based on output-to-output correspondence.
     The premises of Correspondence Theory are carefully explained in van Oostendorp (2005). | B. van der Veer, 2006

COSMETIC MONOLINGUALISM
(Literary) Adapting the translated text in such a way that is perceived as monolingual, despite the original being a multilingual text. | Serena Armida Adele Ceniccola, 2025

COSUBORDINATION

  1. (Syntax) Foley and Van Valin (1984) distinguish three types of clause linkage: coordination, subordination, and cosubordination. This distinction is based on two parameters, [±dependent] and [±embedded].
     The third clause linkage type, cosubordination, is like coordination in that neither clause is embedded in the other. It is also like subordination in that one clause is dependent on the other for some feature. Cosubordination is illustrated by the clause-chaining and switch-reference phenomena widely found in Papuan and American Indian languages. In this construction, "the juncts are not in a subordinate relationship, as one junct is not embedded in the other. However, a dependency relation exists between the juncts in that they must have the same illocutionary force and share the same absolute tense" (Foley and Van Valin 1984).

    1. Examples of cosubordination ([+dependent] [−embedded]) (Foley and Van Valin 1984)
      Abbreviations: 1= first person, 3 = third person, SG = singular; DS = different subject, SS = same subject; PST = past, PRES = present.
      Kewa (Engan; Papua New Guinea)
      a.
       
      Ní
      1SG
      réka-no
      stand-DS
      ágaa
      talk
      lá-a.
      say-3SG.PST
        'I stood up and he talked.'
      b.
       
      Nipú
      3SG
      táá-ma
      hit-SS
      pámua-la.
      walk-3SG.PRES
        'He is hitting it while walking.'

     In (1), "only the final verb is inflected for the person and number of the actor and for tense (Foley and Van Valin 1984). Cosubordination is also illustrated by English participial constructions like (2):

    1. a. Paul sat playing his guitar for hours.
      b. Zelda lay reading a book in bed.
      c. Matthew stood singing on a street corner.

     | Yuko Mizuno, 2008
  2. (Grammar) A different approach is proposed in Olson (1981), Foley and Van Valin (1984), Van Valin and LaPolla (1997). Under this approach, a third, intermediate type in-between coordination and subordination is introduced, which is called cosubordination. In a subordinating construction, one of the clauses is both dependent on the main clause and is embedded (i. e. is a syntactic argument or modifier of the main clause); in a coordinating construction, neither clause is dependent on nor embedded in the other. In contrast, in cosubordinating constructions one of the clauses is assumed to be dependent on but not embedded in the other. | Oleg Belyaev, 2015

COUNTER-BLEEDING
(Syntax) Relation between ordered rules whose order is designed to avoid an effect of bleeding. | Concise Oxford Dictionary of Linguistics, 2007

COUNTER-BLEEDING OPACITY

  1. (Phonology) Refers to the cases when the reason for the application of some phonological process P is not obvious on the surface form. In serialist terms, it is said that in such a case the process P is rendered opaque by the later application of some process Q. According to McCarthy (1999), counterbleeding opacity can be schematically represented as follows:
    Non-Surface-Apparent or Counter-Bleeding Opacity (from McCarthy 1999)
       UR      ABC#
       B→D/_C   ADC#
       C→E/_#     ADE#
       SR      ADE#
     On the scheme above, the context of the first process was destroyed by the application of the second process. Therefore, if we disregard intermediate stages of derivation, the first process will appear to have applied out of context, i.e. /B/ appears to turn into [D] before [E].
     Let’s now consider a real-life example of counterbleeding opacity. McCarthy (1999) presents a case of Yokuts language, where the interaction of long vowel lowering and closed syllable shortening gives rise to non-surface-apparent generalization.

    1. Yokuts Vowel Alternations (from McCarthy 1999)
      a. Vowels are shortened in closed syllables:
        /panaː/  panal   cf. panaːhin  'might arrive/arrives'
        /hoyoː/  hoyol  cf. hoyoːhin  'might name/names'
      b. Long high vowels are lowered:
        /ʔiliː/   ʔileːhin    'fans'
        /cʼuyuː/  cʼuyoːhun   'urinates'
      c. Vowels shortened in accordance with (a) are still lowered:
        /ʔiliː/   ʔilel    'might fan'
        /cʼuyuː/  cʼuyol  'might urinate'

     In a serialist model, the Yokuts data can be captured by counterbleeding order of shortening and lowering rules. Consider the following:

    1. Yokuts Serial Derivation (from McCarthy 1999)
        UR     /ʔiliː-l/
        Lowering  ʔileːl
        Shortening  ʔilel

     | Olga Tihonova, 2009
  2. (Phonology) Phonological opacity is often the result of the counterfeeding or counterbleeding order of two or more phonological rules, which is called counter-feeding opacity or counter-bleeding opacity. An example of both can be seen in the future-marking suffix -en in the Yokutsan languages. Its vowel is supposed to be an underlying high vowel, though it surfaces as a mid vowel. Vowel rounding always applies before vowel lowering. Due to this order of phonological rules, the interaction of the suffix vowel with rounding harmony is opaque. There is still vowel harmony between the suffix vowel and a preceding high vowel as these vowels agree in roundedness, while a vowel with the feature [−high] would usually be exempt from rounding harmony. As a result of counter-bleeding opacity, the apparent motivation for the vowel harmony has disappeared here. Moreover, as a result of counter-feeding opacity, it cannot be told from the surface structure of the suffix vowel why it fails to harmonize in rounding with preceding mid vowels (Backović 2011). | Wikipedia, 2025

COUNTER-FEEDING
(Syntax) Relation between ordered rules whose order is designed to avoid an effect of feeding. | Concise Oxford Dictionary of Linguistics, 2007

COUNTERCYCLICITY
(Syntax) Countercyclic operations allow structure building at any node in the tree instead of just at the root, i.e., they allow the capability of expanding the tree at a non-root position. | Hans-Martin Gärtner and Jens Michaelis, 2008

COUNTERFACTUAL
(Grammar) Counterfactual constructions convey the speaker's belief that the actualization of a situation was potential—possible, desirable, imminent, or intended—but did not take place, i.e. it did not belong to the actual world. "Counterfactuals" have mostly been studied in formal-semantic frameworks; a few studies have explored counterfactuals from a functional perspective (see Olguín Martínez, and Lester 2021, Van Linden and Verstraete 2008, Verstraete and Luk 2021).
 Counterfactuals are typically associated with counterfactual conditionals:

  1. If I had known that, I wouldn't have appointed him.
 However, they may show up in other guises as well, e.g. hypothetical manner constructions. Apart from complex sentences, counterfactuality can also be expressed by simple clauses, e.g.:  The counterfactual constructions discussed above form a family of constructions. In recent years, this notion has established itself in Construction Grammar as a label for sets of constructions with a similar meaning or function, often despite striking differences of form (Diessel 2019). | Counterfactuals: Families of Constructions [Workshop], 2023

 

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