Coreference in Non-constituent coordination

[Ivan A. Sag]

Regarding (1)-(3), Chris Manning wrote:

>> (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.

> 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.

I have to point out that Carpenter's discussion in this section offers
one new example (due to Dale Gerdemann):

(42a) He's gonna find out who's naughty and nice.

Otherwise, the discussion in this section simply refers to that of Hermann
Hendriks' (1993), who claimed that such examples are ambiguous, a claim that
has been challenged by many native speakers, most famously perhaps, by
Partee's earlier observation that exx. like (4) are unambigous:

(4) Few books are explicit and easy to read.

I have to agree with Ash and Paul in rejecting the distributed quantifier
readings for (1)-(3). Though (42a) does occur in a Christmas carol (Santa
Claus is Coming to Town), it could well be poetic license of some kind,
motivated by the meter, for example (`...who's naughty and who's nice' really
changes the rhythmic feel of the song). Have people found other naturally
occurring examples of distributed quantifiers in subject position?

-Ivan

-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Ivan A. Sag
Professor of Linguistics
Director of Graduate Studies: Symbolic Systems Program
Senior Researcher: Center for the Study of Language and Information
Stanford University - Stanford, CA  94305  USA
-------------------------------------------------------------------------