Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun The dependent or subordinate relationship of clauses with connectives.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun In grammar, dependent construction: opposed to parataxis.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun grammar Syntactic subordination of one clause or construction to another

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Greek hupotaxis, subjection, from hupotassein, to arrange under : hupo-, hypo- + tassein, tag-, to arrange.]

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Examples

  • It is no good trying to issue bans on hypotaxis, or on any other phenomenon, and make them apply to one sex only.

    Pia Tafdrup: Over the Water I Walk (VIII) - 2 David McDuff 2010

  • It is no good trying to issue bans on hypotaxis, or on any other phenomenon, and make them apply to one sex only.

    Archive 2010-03-01 David McDuff 2010

  • As a result, hypotaxis, or syntactic subordination, has a very different role in German, which clearly marks each subordinate clause not only with commas but also by shifting its verb to the very end, so that we can easily tell which clause is describing foreground and which background.

    The Metamorphosis, in The Penal Colony,and Other Stories Franz Kafka 2000

  • Similarly, if you go back and look at what Yeats and his acolytes and influences were doing with Irish literature, you do not find the kind of focus on elaborate hypotaxis that you associate with, say, the Donne moment.

    Panel 2: Aesthetic Lineage and Originality : Ange Mlinko : Harriet the Blog : The Poetry Foundation 2007

  • As parataxis (loose relationships between clauses) gives way to hypotaxis, there is a need for pronouns to signal the union between clauses

    Recently Uploaded Slideshows 2009

  • The opposite of parataxis is hypotaxis, the marking of relations between propositions and clause by connectives that point backward or forward.

    Writing for the Web 2009

  • The opposite of parataxis is hypotaxis, the marking of relations between propositions and clause by connectives that point backward or forward.

    Secondary Worlds: Teaching, Technology, and English Language Arts 2009

  • The opposite of parataxis is hypotaxis, the marking of relations between propositions and clause by connectives that point backward or forward. ...

    Corrente 2009

  • At any given moment there's never enough text on the screen to build up a really meaty paragraph, which means there's little opportunity for the constructive, building-block hypotaxis I expect from modern prose.

    Anime Nano! 2008

  • Kafka learned Kleist’s lesson about the anxiety created by intricate hypotaxis and the suspense of waiting for the verb to drop like the headsman’s ax at the end of a long and harrowing sentence.

    The Metamorphosis, in The Penal Colony,and Other Stories Franz Kafka 2000

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