Sank's Glossary of Linguistics 
 Coo

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

 

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