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.

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 ] ]

COORDINATION OF LIKES
(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

COORDINATION TEST
(Syntax) The coordination test assumes that only constituents can be coordinated, i.e., joined by means of a coordinator such as and:

• He enjoys [writing sentences] and [reading them].
• [He enjoys writing] and [she enjoys reading] sentences.
• [He enjoys] but [she hates] writing sentences.

COPULA
(Syntax) Plural copulas, copulae. A word used to link the subject of a sentence with a predicate (a subject complement), such as the word is in the sentence The sky is blue. The word "copula" derives from the Latin noun for a "link" or "tie" that connects two different things. (Moro 1997)
  A copula is often a verb or a verb-like word, though this is not universally the case. (Pustet 2005) A verb that is a copula is sometimes called a copulative or copular verb. In English primary education grammar courses, a copula is often called a linking verb. In other languages, copulas show more resemblances to pronouns, as in Classical Chinese and Guarani, or may take the form of suffixes attached to a noun, as in Beja, Ket, and Inuit languages. | Wikipedia 2016

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:

• Traditional autosegmental analyses treat copy epenthesis as the result of feature spreading: the epenthetic vowel, lacking features of its own, obtains them through autosegmental association with a nearby host (e.g. Clements 1986, 1991, Gafos and Lombardi 1999, Halle et al. 2000, Shademan 2002, Kawahara 2007).
• Analyses in the framework of Articulatory Phonology (Browman and Goldstein 1986) claim that (at least some) cases of copy epenthesis result from gestural realignment: in the mapping from underlying /pra/ to surface [para], the constellation of gestures that yield an [r] migrate to the middle of the nucleus, allowing underlying /a/ to be heard on both sides (e.g. Steriade 1990, Hall 2003, 2006).
• Others propose extensions of Correspondence Theory (McCarthy and Prince 1995) in which a copy and its host stand in correspondence with one another; faithfulness constraints render the corresponding pair identical (Kitto and de Lacy 1999, Yu 2005, Kim 2008).

COPY RAISING
(Syntax) In syntax, copy raising is 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 Blackfoot example below.
  Examples:

1. English
   Richard seems as if he won.
   (Compare with ordinary raising: Richard seems to have won.)
2. Modern Greek
   I kopéles fén-onde na févgh-un.
   [the girls seem-3PL that leave-3PL]
   'The girls seem to be leaving.'
3. Blackfoot
   Nitsíksstatawa kááhkanistahsi nohkówa.
   [1-want-3s 2-might-tell-3s 1-son-3s]
   "I want you to tell my son."
   (Compare without the raising:)
   Nitsíksstaa kááhkanistahsi nohkówa.
   [1-want 2-might-tell-3s 1-son-3s]

COPY THEORY OF MOVEMENT
(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

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
(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.

• Many English words that are eligible for the rule are monomorphemic or underived words such as mist, pact, bold; in such cases the final stop is part of the root.
• In another class of eligible words, the final stop is a reflex of the past tense suffix -ed: e.g., missed, packed, bowled. In such words the final stops bear a functional load: deleting them creates surface homophony with the present tense and obliterates a tense distinction. Hence, Kiparsky's (1982) distinctness condition predicts that past tense /t,d/ will resist deletion, showing a lower rate of deletion than comparable monomorphemic words, e.g., missed < mist.

CORRELATE

1. (Syntax) 

   Correlate
   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, 2017
2. (Syntax) 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 t_i 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
(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.

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

CORRESPONDENCE THEORY
(Phonology) 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:

(Using pre-OT labels:)
• Cyclic phonology.
• A subset of level ordering effects.
• Derived environment conditions.
• Opaque rule interactions, and
• Base-reduplicant identity.

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
(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.
   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.'

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

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:
   2. 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.

• Clauses that are structurally similar to the main clause of a counterfactual conditional, or
• Clauses that could be regarded as a counterfactual conditional with an elided main clause.

Page Last Modified May 31, 2025

 

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