Subordinator

A subordinator is a word or morphological marker which often stands peripherally in a clause and indicates the subordinate status of the clause marked by it. In addition, subordinators often give information about the semantic kind of subordination (complement clause, relative clause, adverbial clause).

Examples

In English, words like that, which, although, because are used as subordinators. Many languages with rich morphology have subordinators that are affixes on the verb.

Synonyms

• subordinating conjunction (this is the term used in older grammar)

other languages

German Subordinator