Fawcett's Argument On Hypotaxis vs Embedding [1]

 Fawcett (2010: 327):

(1a, i-iii) He left the room before / after / while they voted.

(3a, i-v) He left the room, then / (,) and then / (,) and they voted.

Firstly, I suggest that all linguists would agree that (la, i) — which was earlier labelled simply (la) — has a close systemic relationship with (la, ii-iii). Notice, though, that one result of recognising this rather obvious fact is to show us that the parallel between (la) and (3a) is less close than one might otherwise assume. 

Blogger Comments:

To be clear, this is the beginning of Fawcett's argument which seeks to show that dependent clauses are better analysed as embedded clauses than as ranking clauses in hypotactic clause complexes. To this end, he aims to show that dependent clauses are more closely related to prepositional phrases serving as clause Adjuncts than they are to ranking clauses in paratactic clause complexes. His method will be to compare expressions of time across the different grammatical domains. 

However, Fawcett misleads by beginning with a false correspondence. While (1a) features expressions of 'earlier' vs 'later' vs 'same' time, (3a) features only expressions of 'later' time.

That is, Fawcett begins his argument that dependent clauses do not parallel their paratactic counterparts by choosing examples that are not parallel, instead of those that are, such as:

But see later posts for further clarifications.