The Difference Between the Length of Adpositions and Conjunctions and Relator Principle of Light-Heavy—An Typology Study and Cross-language Survey

According to Dik(1978/1997), both adpositions and conjunctions are kinds of relators.This paper firstly shows that the length of Chinese adpositions are shorter than that of conjunctions while the words(or phrase) which are conjuncted by the adposition are lighter than the clause which are conjuncted by the conjunctions.It follows that the heavier the sentence unit which the relator conjuncts, the longer the relator is.This rule is called Relator Principle of Light-Heavy in this paper.Then it inspects the Light-Heavy principle by a cross-language survey on adpositions and conjunctions and other relators.