STALKING THE PERFECT TERM: ENTER PRIMES, EXIT COES

 In SUBS AND COES PT. 1, I wrote:

While cogitating on the possibility that centricity might be described through some better metaphor, I meditated a bit on Jung’s use of the term “superordinate.” Since this word is  defined as  “a thing that represents a superior order or category within a system of classification,” it seemed to apply to my idea of a centric will that was simply a given of the author’s whim, rather than through intra-textual discourse.

I believe I had already used "superordinate" loosely in previous posts, but while researching the opposite term "subordinate," I came across the grammatical terms "coordinate and subordinate." In a half dozen posts I used these terms to describe "centric" and "eccentric" presences in a narrative, while using "coes and subs" respectively as terms for the presences themselves. However, as I started playing around with evaluating types of narrative ensembles, I found that the term "coordinate" just didn't work for repeated usage, and so I started to employ the terms "superordinate" and "subordinate" for the two types of ensembles, as I did here.

However, now that I'm about to delve into an involved analysis of the crossover-phenomenon, I still need short and pithy terms for the different types of presences, and while "subs" still works for "subordinate presences," I'm not about to call the superordinate presences "soups" or anything similar. So I'm arbitrarily reaching into synonym-territory, to wit:

SUBORDINATE PRESENCES are still SUBS.

SUPERORDINATE PRESENCES are now PRIMES.

The necessity for short, pithy terms for these narrative constructs will be apparent as I begin the crossover-project proper. First up, though, a working analysis of narrative itself.