Subordination: A Perspective of Manipuri Embedded Clause Structures

Manipuri, being one of the Tibeto-Burman languages has a very unique place among the languages of the world. It has its own literatures and grammars and also is the richest preserver of the heritage of old literature than any other languages in Manipur, a north-eastern state of India. The pre sent paper studies the syntactic structures regarding the various forms of embedded clauses prevailing in Manipuri. The analysis exhibits the facts that all the embedd ed clauses in Manipuri are constructed through the addition of nominalizer, qu otative and nominalizer along with case markers. This paper also discusses struct ural and functional classification of embedded clauses in Manipuri. Structurally, embe dded clauses are composed of by adding nominalizers, quotatives and nominalizers al ong with case markers. Functionally embedded clauses in a matrix sentence perform the function of nouns, adjectives and adverbs. Subordination Subordination is a non-symmetrical relation, holdin g between two clauses- an independent , capable of existing as a complete sentence and a dependent , capable of making up a grammatical sentence only when subordinated to a further clause. Subordination is between the two clauses in such a way that the dependent clause is a constituent or part of the independent clause that is, one of the parts is clearly more salient or important, while the other part is in so me sense subordinate. In subordination, one may see subordination as the 'downgrading' of a clause to a clause to the status of a sub-clausal unit (Quirk. et. al, 1972). The device of subordination enables one to organize multiple clause structures.