Macrosyntactic relations Edit the page

In this part we will present relations that we use to analyse relations beyond the microsyntactic analysis between a governor and its dependant. We call this type of analysis macrosyntax.

This approach can be used to analyse two elements that are placed side by side with no explicit marker of coordination, subordination, or argument relation with the head word. Ex: I told him don’t do it. in this sentence we miss the usual marker that. Or in the following sentence: My brother’s children, you know he has two daughters, will come to visit the part you know he has two daughters is inserted in the main sentence.

This phenomenon is frequent in languages and especially in oral speech. We gather these cases under the parataxis relation.

We distinguish:

• parataxis:parenth for parenthetical clauses (that can form independent sentences)
• parataxis:insert for inserted clauses (that cannot form an independent sentence)
• parataxis:obj for attaching direct discourse

However, there are three other cases that are not gathered under the parataxis relationship. The following three relations link elements to the main proposition on a macrosyntactic level. In some cases, these elements can be propositions, but also simple elements.

• dislocated
• vocative
• discourse