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The distinction between coordination and subordination is not clear-cut. The essence of coordination is the mental juxtaposition of structures construed as parallel and co-equal. Subordination has a number of dimensions, including form, the participation of one clause in the relationship profiled by another, and a clause's profile being overridden at the composite structure level. Constituency and profiling are often flexible, depending on factors like the size of clauses and their discourse function. The traditional division into adverbial, relative, and complement clauses is based primarily on how clauses are connected with one another. To the extent that these distinctions hold, they are based on semantic function rather than specific structural configurations. In the case of complements, the classic distinction between control and raising constructions is non-fundamental, the latter being just a special case of the former. Finite and nonfinite complements differ not just in form but in meaning and typical function. Predicates taking finite complements pertain to the epistemic status of propositions; those taking nonfinite complements pertain to the realization of occurrences. Complementation involves multiple conceptualizers and levels of conception. Different conceptualizers apprehend the same proposition each from their own perspective, assessing it with respect to their own conception of reality. Complement-taking predicates refer to different phases of this assessment. Impersonal constructions invoke a conceptualizer and the relevant scope of awareness in generalized fashion, suggesting that anyone would make the assessment under the circumstances.

In his typological study of complementation, Noonan (1985) writes that “Complementation is basically a matter of matching a particular complement type to a particular complement-taking predicate.” This matching problem captures one of the main issues on which functionally and cognitively oriented research in the area of complementation has centered. Central to this research is the question of why the different complement types in a language distribute differently over the inventory of complement-taking predicates and how language users decide which complement type to combine with which predicate. This chapter discusses the major currents in solving the matching problem. Section 1 focuses on the initial cognitive-functionalist attempt to formulate general semantic principles in order to account for the use and distribution of different complement types. Section 2 presents a first reaction against this view, inspired by variationist and corpus-based research that highlights the multiplicity of factors involved in complement choice. Section 3 proposes another revision, inspired by constructional models of language, which consists in drawing attention to the locally organized character of the system of complementation. This approach can reconcile the demands of both the semanticist and the variationist approaches.