coordination of unlikes

[S. Yatabe]

Carl,

> I was wondering if it wouldn't be better to employ lists rather than
> (the analog of) sets in this context.  More specifically, how about
> saying
>  (i)   that the value of the HEAD feature is not just a single "head"
>        object but a list of "head" objects,
> >>
>
> Usually a list of length one, right?

Right.

>
>
> >
>  (ii)  that the HEAD value of a coordinate structure is the list
>        obtained by concatenating the HEAD values of the conjuncts, and
> >>
>
> Could be right.
>
> >
>  (iii) that the VALENCE value of a coordinate structure is identical
>        to the VALENCE value of each of the conjuncts?
> >>
>
> Too strong: what would be the VALENCE value of EITHER MEET OR BE in
> the following example (due to Neal Whitman):
>
>   He would like to either meet or be Michael Jordan.
>
> assuming that MEET wants an NP[-PRD] complement.

I was assuming that cases of neutrality/syncretism could be taken
care of by elaborating the sort hierarchy, as in Levine et al.'s
theory.

Incidentally, the above sentence may be an instance of right-node
raising.  If so, I don't even need to resort to Levine et al.'s
theory in this case.  My theory of right-node raising (available at
http://cslipublications.stanford.edu/HPSG/HPSG00/hpsg00-toc.html)
allows two prosodic constituents to be right-node raised as long
as they have identical prosodic internal structure, even if they
have distinct morphosyntactic/semantic internal structure.  So
an NP[-PRD] in the first conjunct and an NP[+PRD] in the second
conjunct can be right-node raised together, as long as they are
pronounced the same.

The following example from Katharina Hartmann's book "Right Node
Raising and Gapping" (p.150) seems to demonstrate
that two phonologically identical expressions can indeed sometimes
be right-node raised together even if they are syntactically and
semantically distinct from each other.

Peter beschreibt den (Quark) und Martin beschreibt das Quark.
`Peter describes the fresh cheese and Martin describes the quark.'

"Quark" is ambiguous: with the masculine article, it refers to
fresh cheese, while with the neuter article, it refers to an
elementary particle.  This I think is a case of ambiguity, not
neutrality, but right-node raising is still possible.

> >
> If we do this, we will also have to assume that the MOD feature is not
> a head feature but a valence feature,
> >>
>
> Then how would MOD values be transmitted from the lexical heads of
> adjuncts to their maximal projections?

The VALENCE principle would have to be modified to take care of that.

>
> >
> and so on, and I haven't really
> thought through all the ramifications, but this analysis seems capable
> not only of capturing coordination of unlikes but also of providing a
> basis for developing an adequate account of sentences involving
> "agreement with the nearest conjunct", namely sentences like "There
> was a man and two women in the room." and "Either your brakes or your
> eyesight is at fault."
> >>
>
> There are some bugs to work out, but your point is well-taken: simply
> taking the category of a coordinate structure to be the set (or the
> union, if the conjunct categories are already sets) of the categories
> of the conjuncts, does not handle the `principled resolution' cases
> (to use the terminology of Corbett 1983.

OK.  But actually what I really wanted to ask you was this question:
If the neutrality/syncretism portion of what you called "the Ingria
problem" can be taken care of by Levine et al.'s theory and the
coordination portion of the problem can be taken care of by the
list-valued HEAD feature, do we still need to "go to the harder
math"?

Shuichi Yatabe
yatabe at boz.c.u-tokyo.ac.jp
http://gamp.c.u-tokyo.ac.jp/yatabe/