Study into Subordination in Slovenian Multi-Clause Sentences

The project focuses on the study of subordination in Slovenian multi-clause sentences. The aim of the research is to extend the existing typology of subordination and to study its characteristics in detail. The study will be based primarily on material collected in the latest reference corpus of written standard Slovene, Gigafida 2.0, which guarantees a highly accurate reflection of the current linguistic reality.

Methodologically, all possibilities offered by the analysis of large-scale real data with the most powerful corpus tools will be used, in particular the CQL query language and the N-gram function.

The main research questions are

• What are the relevant criteria for distinguishing different types of subordinate clauses?
• Which semantic groups of verbs appear in the main and subordinate clauses?
• Which nouns function as correlatives of attributive subordinate clauses?
• How are clauses linked by pronouns acting as anaphora and cataphora?
• What is the role of conjunctions and correlatives (i.e. pronouns, nouns or adverbs in the main clause that indicate the function of the subordinate clause)?
• What is the function of word order in subordinate clauses?
• Which conjunctions introduce certain subordinate clauses?

The main aims of the research are

• A precise typology of subordination that accurately reflects the current state of Slovenian standard language.
• An analysis of the role of all words that form subordinate clauses.
• The identification of subordination types that have not yet been studied.
• A systematic study of the occurrence of (multi-part) conjunctions as a basis for solving orthographic dilemmas, especially variations in comma placement (e.g., zato, ker vs. zato ker) and in writing words together or separately (e.g., med tem, ko vs. medtem, ko vs. medtem ko).
• Identifying all conjunctions and other words that form subordinate clauses.
• An analysis of word order in subordinate clauses.