Coordination

coordination [kō‚ȯrd·ən′ā·shən]

(electricity)

Design of series-connected circuit breakers whereby breakers with lower current ratings trip before those with higher ratings.

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Coordination 

(1) The relative development of organs and parts of the body in phylogeny. The term was proposed by A. N. Severtsov. The German zoologist L. Plate called the phenomenon phyletic correlation. I. I. ShmaPgauzen regarded coordination as a regular function of changes in parts (organs) in the course of evolution.

One may differentiate topographical coordination, which is expressed in stable relations between organs, although there are no immediate functional connections between them (for example, coordination between reduction of the end digits and progressive development of the middle digits in the phylogenetic series of ungulates); dynamic, or constructive, coordination, which is determined by the constancy of functional relationships between various organs (for example, between sense organs and the corresponding nerve centers, or between flight muscles and the sternal keel in birds, etc.); and biological coordination, or coadaptation, to which belong the majority of correlations established by G. Cuvier.

(2) In physiology, the concordance of the activities of various organs and systems in the body, which is conditioned by a combination of the processes of excitation and inhibition in the central nervous system. For example, when the extremities are flexed, excitation of the nerve cells that send impulses to the flexor muscles produces simultaneous inhibition of the cells connected to the extensor muscles; the relaxation of the extensors that accompanies this facilitates flexion of the extremities.

A. A. MAKHOTIN

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Coordination 

in linguistics, a syntactic bond between grammatically independent parts of a sentence or between constructions, including sentences. Coordination is opposed to subordination and is expressed by special conjunctions, the number of which is finite. The coordinating bond is classified according to meaning as a copulative bond (the conjunction i [“and”]), an adversative bond (a [“and,” “but”], no [“but”]), a gradational bond (ne tol’ko . . . no i [“not only ... but also”]), or a disjunctive bond (Hi [“or”]).

In a simple sentence, coordination is obligatorily combined with the category of homogeneity: the elements that are joined are in the same relation to some other part of the sentence, as in Prishli otets i mat’ (“Mother and father came”), Uchitel’ strog, no spravedliv (“The teacher is strict but fair”), V zale ne tol’ko vzroslye, no i deli (“There are not only adults in the hall, but also children”), and Vstretimsia segodnia Hi zavtra (“We’ll meet today or tomorrow”). Coordination here occupies a peripheral position and serves to expand the sentence and increase within it the number of syntactic constructions of the same type. In a complex sentence, coordination is not an accompanying category but rather an independent syntactic category that differs from subordination both according to position within the system and according to internal content. Unlike subordinating relations, however, coordinating relations are here less differentiated and more syncretic, more like asyndeton-type relations. It is advisable to differentiate coordination from enumeration, which does not create semantic relations between the members of a series but only indicates sequence (simultaneity, alternation, and so forth).

I. N. KRUCHININA