Between subordination and coordination in Gawwada

Gawwada, an East Cushitic language of the Dullay group spoken in Southwest Ethiopia, is a rather typical Cushitic language as far as the sentence and phrasal word order are concerned: SOV and Head-Modifier orders are followed. It is instead radically different from the neighboring languages in its clause-linking strategies: for one thing, relative clauses are rather sparingly used; moreover, clefting is unknown, and there are no specific subordinate verbal paradigms. Gawwada makes extensive use of a general coordinator =pa in order to link both nominals, phrases and clauses, as well as of a subset of the adpositions which are used in nominal phrases. Moreover, a specific inflectional form of the verb, the Consecutive, is used in certain circumstances in the non-initial clauses. It turns out to be quite difficult to decide whether the clause-linking mechanisms of Gawwada are instances of coordination, subordination, or, still, something else.