Semantics and Pragmatics of English Verbal Dependent Coordination

Abstract

This article investigates coordination of verbal adjuncts and complements in English, considering coordinations of adjunct with adjunct, complement with complement, and adjunct with complement, for both non-WH and WH elements, using the conjunctions or, and, and but. Previous analyses have never to my knowledge covered all of these cases. It is shown that syntactic or (compositional) semantic constraints on coordination fail to cover all the facts, as do ambiguity-based explanations. Better (though still incomplete) coverage is provided by an analysis based on event semantics and neo-Gricean conversational implicature.

Strategies of wh-coordination

“…[✓adj & adj] It is important to note right away, however, that not all varieties of English allow for coordination with optional arguments. My data work with informants indicates that some varieties of English only allow adjunct material to be coordinated (see also Whitman 2004Whitman -2007 for a speaker of such an idiolect) -i.e. some varieties of English are like Dutch (cf.…”

“…(6 Before concluding this section, it must also be observed that in addition to the three types of languages in which CMWQs can be formed, there is also a fourth type, in which CMWQs cannot be formed at all. Japanese is an example of such a language (Whitman 2004(Whitman -2007, as well as Chinese. 2 To take stock so far, and to give an overview of the distribution of CMWQs among the languages that prominently figure in the discussion in this study, the following table summarizes the properties of the four types of CMWQ languages and constructions.…”

“…Note that my Spanish informants differ from those of Whitman (2004Whitman ( -2007. The latter can coordinate obligatory arguments, mine cannot.…”

“…This prediction is clearly false, since non-multiple movement languages such as English, Greek or Spanish also allow for pair-list interpretations (see Whitman 2004Whitman , 2004Whitman -2007.…”

“…The literature on CMWQs is sizeable. Among work dedicated to this phenomenon, one finds case studies of their syntax in individual languages (Bánréti 1992;Giannakidou & Merchant 1998;Kazenin 2002;Lipták 2003;Merchant 2007;Zhang 2007;Gribanova 2009;Gracanin-Yuksek 2007;Tomaszewicz 2011;Raţiu 2010, Citko to appear), typologically oriented comparative syntactic studies (Citko & Gracanin-Yuksek 2010;Haida & Repp in press) as well as proposals about the functional use and semantics of CMWQs (Whitman 2004;Gribanova 2009;Tomaszewicz 2011, to appear).…”