Hypotaxis

Hypotaxis is the grammatical arrangement of functionally similar but "unequal" constructs (from Greek hypo- "beneath", and taxis "arrangement"); certain constructs have more importance than others inside a sentence. Its antonym is parataxis.

Hypotactic constructions in complex sentence are often made using subordinating conjunctions and relative pronouns that connect dependent clauses to the independent clause.

Hypotaxis may also stem from premodification: in the phrase "inexpensive composite materials", "composite" modifies "materials" while "inexpensive" modifies the complex head "composite materials", rather than "composite" or "materials". In this example the phrase units are hierarchically structured, rather than being at the same level, as compared with the example "Cockroaches love warm, damp, dark places." The key difference in how they are written is that premodification doesn't have a comma between the modifiers.