Children add further complexity by combining two or more clauses. They can link them with coordination or subordination. In subordinate constructions, one clause is embedded in the main or matrix clause. The embedded clause can fill a grammatical role, as subject, say, in complement constructions, or it can modify parts of the main clause, adding to a noun phrase with a relative clause, or to a verb phrase with a temporal clause. These constructions allow for more options in the flow of information as well as in the expression of more complex events. Among the first constructions here are coordinations of different elements in a clause, as well as of different clauses. Among subordinate clause constructions, because, what, when, and so were the most frequent up to 2;9, followed by if, that, and where. They produced relative clauses to specify referents; complements with verbs like think and know. And they produced temporal, causal, and conditional constructions to describe sequences of events. Children treat clause order first as reflecting the actual order of events, only later assigning the appropriate meanings to connectives like before and after. And they take time to master the meanings of because and if.

[13.1] This chapter looks at the structure of Acts and their various components. An Act begins life as a Bill and its components flow through into the Act when passed. Certain components of a Bill are mandated by legislation1 or parliamentary standing orders.2 Others reflect the choices made by a jurisdiction about Act structure.

In this chapter, the units linked by the co-ordinator and are shown to correlate with orality: oral genres use more super-phrasal (e.g. clausal) co-ordination, while higher proportions of phrasal co-ordination characterize literate genres. A development towards more super-phrasal co-ordinationcan thus indicate colloquialization. Analyses demonstrate that newspapers, parliamentary debates, and letters written by men exhibit this very trend in diachrony, while women’s letters unexpectedly develop in the opposite direction. The latter change, however, is shown to be a result not of anti-colloquialization, but of an increased reliance on the sentence as a unit of written discourse in letters by women; main clauses are increasingly placed in separate sentences or separated by semicolons rather than being linked with dashes and co-ordinators, which was a feature of several women’s idiolects in the early nineteenth century. Sentence-initial and, which was a proscribed feature, is the focus of a separate study and is shown to increase in frequency in speech-based and speech-purposed writing. Overall, the results point to colloquialization in several genres.

Chapter 1 addresses the jurisdiction of the Court to grant remedies in situations in which states did not provide an instrument that would confer such powers to it. The competence of the Court to grant remedies, when agreements of states exist in this sense, is established and without controversy, especially because the principle of consent is applicable in these situations. However, the nature of its power to give judgment on the remedies of international law in cases in which its jurisdiction is derived from an agreement that does not include any provision in this respect merits a brief assessment, as without such competence the Court might not have the power to resolve the dispute in a final manner. This chapter analyses the case-law of the Permanent Court of International Justice and of the International Court of Justice in order to determine whether the Court has addressed this issue and the justifications for which it has concluded that it has such competence.