Coreference in Non-constituent coordination

Chris Manning manning at CS.Stanford.EDU
Fri May 17 18:56:37 UTC 2002


On 17 May 2002, Ash Asudeh wrote:
 > On Fri, 17 May 2002, Dick Hudson wrote:
 >
 > > ## But surely that's not true of subjects in (so-called) VP coordination?
 > > (1)	People come to London in the summer and avoid it in the winter.
 > > (2)	Only one student got a distinction and failed - all the rest just passed.
 > > (3)	One boy kissed Mary and hugged Jane - all the other girls got kisses
 > > and hugs from several boys.
 >
 > For what it's worth, I absolutely cannot get (2) and (3) to mean what Dick
 > wants them to mean.

I would agree that it seems hard out of context to get the desired
reading of (2).  But, at any rate, there's an extensive literature
arguing this back and forth.  I think most people accept that this
reading is felicitous for some sentences with this structure.  See for
instance Section 7.6 of Carpenter's Type Logical Semantics.

Chris.



More information about the HPSG-L mailing list