A lexicon- and construction-based approach to coordinations

Abstract

Leaving aside elliptical coordinations, it is striking that no agreement has been reached on the structure of basic coordinate constructions. We propose that:

• coordinate constructions are structurally asymmetric: the conjunction makes a subconstituent with one of the conjuncts.
• such constituents can have several functions: coordinate daughter, adjunct daughter or main clause.

In order to show that some conjuncts should be analysed as adjuncts, we focus on asymmetric cases of coordination, in which the order of the conjuncts cannot be reversed, taking examples from French, Welsh and Korean. We present an HPSG analysis which treats the coordinating conjunctions as weak heads, with lexical subtypes, and coordinate phrases as multi-headed constructions, with different subtypes.